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BUILDING ERAS IN 
RELIGION 



BY 

HORACE BUSHNELL 



Literary Varieties 
III 



Centenary E&itfon 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1903 






. of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

MAR 10 1809 

Copyri^.it intry 
CLASS <X. XXC, No 



Copyright, 1881, By 
MARY A. BUSHNEIvI, 



Copyright, 1909, by 
MARY B. CHENEY 



EDITORS PREFACE TO THE 
EDITION OF 1881 

Of the three volumes by Dr. Bushnell now produced 
under the general title of "Literary Varieties" two 
have long been out of print and one is new. The lat- 
ter, "Building Eras in Religion/ 7 consists of various 
articles and addresses which have been printed in some 
fugitive form, and which Dr. Bushnell himself desig- 
nated under the heading of Reliquiae as the material 
for a book to be published after his death. Grouping 
these three books together now as a collection of his 
miscellaneous writings, we would emphasize the dis- 
tinction between these and his theological works, these 
"the spontaneous overplus and literary by-play of a 
laborious profession," the latter the embodiment of that 
profession itself. They so richly represent and, as it 
were, personify the varied interests of his life as to form 
in themselves, if rightly interpreted, a biography neces- 
sary to the completeness of any which has been or could 
be written. As an aid to such interpretation, a few facts 
and thoughts may here be fitly presented. 

The oration on Work and Play, often spoken of as 
the supreme literary product of his life, followed closely 
upon a profound private religious experience and was 



EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 

written and delivered in that year of theolo-gie tempest 
which threatened to overwhelm him as a heretic. But 
its atmosphere is serene, the high tenor of its literary 
inspiration unbroken by a note of strife. His ideal of 
a literary era painted in its closing pages seems to be 
that it shall emerge from a period of struggle under 
a religious impulse, as his own had done. The same 
thought is conveyed with equal force and beauty in his 
address on "Our Obligations to the Dead," in the vol- 
ume on "Building Eras in Religion," wherein he de- 
picts the future literary age for which the great strug- 
gle of our war has, he thinks, furnished fit training and 
noble subjects, religion being still "the only sufficient 
fertilizer of genius as it is the only real emancipator of 
man." 

In the first volume, Work and Play, we have the 
"Age of Homespun," which contains the scenery and 
the dramatis personw of his childhood; "The Growth 
of Law," in which we find the impress of his law stud- 
ies; "The Founders Great in their Unconsciousness," 
wherein the strength of his own hereditary Puritan 
consciousness is revealed ; "The Day of Roads," the di- 
rect product of his European journey; "City Plans," 
so closely connected with his work for Hartford and its 
Park ; and "Religious Music," whose melodious thought 
and rhythmical style seem to date back to that time 
when, as a boy, he taught himself by a reverse process 
from his mother's song how to read music. One address 
on "Agriculture at the East" has been withdrawn, as 
superseded by the progress of history, and in its place 



EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 

we have now that on "Barbarism the First Danger," 
the first public address by which he became widely 
known. Its truths were unpopular truths — needed, but 
unwelcome to the sensitiveness of new communities. As 
long as we have a frontier the article may be useful. 

These articles, taken all together, evince a large 
amount of reading and study. Apart from the refer- 
ences to historical works, many of which were consulted 
in preparation for certain subjects, we find everywhere 
evidences that his mind was keenly alive to the inspira- 
tions of the great thought-makers, from Plato and 
Epictetus down to Bacon and Shakespeare. Books of 
systematized thought were less attractive to him than 
those in which thought is offered in free and fluent 
forms, capable of transmutation. The works of scien- 
tists and travelers, whose subject-matter is necessarily 
in the concrete, had special value to his mind as offer- 
ing food for thought. He read more than is commonly 
believed, largely of books by the few master-minds, but 
also freely of the best present writers, — very little of 
metaphysical or philosophical books. 

The volume on the "Moral Uses of Dark Things" 
is not, as might be supposed, a logical treatise designed 
to solve the enigmas of life, but a series of observations 
made in a curious and inquiring spirit upon some of 
the strange and mysterious provisions of creation. It 
was as early as the year 1846 that Dr. Bushnell first 
had his attention called to some of these morally unac- 
countable aspects of human life and nature, and he then 
preached sermons on the uses of deformity and of phys- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 

ical danger. From time to time he observed new phases 
of the same riddle, and tore the disguise of a curse from 
many a blessing. At last he consolidated the fruit of his 
observations in our second volume, a subtle and curious 
contribution to the thought of the time, but one so un- 
pretending of system as to be properly classified with 
his "Literary Varieties." 

In the fact that the material of the third volume, 
entitled "Building Eras in Religion," was selected by 
Dr. Bushnell himself as that which he was willing to 
have stand when he was gone, we have his indorsement 
of it as being not inconsistent with his ripest thought. 
Notwithstanding this the articles were some of them 
among his earliest, as the date given with each will 
show. 

It is through these three volumes that he will be best 
known to the world in his personality as a man. They 
are both flower and fruit, and not only illustrate but are 
the growth, the ceaseless activity, the ever-varying form 
of life in one of the most living of men. 

Editor. 
1881. 

Since the above was written another book, " The Spirit 
in Man," has been published (1903), a book which also 
contains much of miscellaneous material. 

Editor. 

1903. 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

I. Building Eras in Religion 9 

II. The New Education 35 

III. Common Schools 71 

IV. The Christian Trinity, a Practical Truth 106 

V. Spiritual Economy of Revivals op Re- 
ligion 150 

VI. Pulpit Talent 182 

VII. Training for the Pulpit Manward . . .221 

VIII. Our Gospel a Gift to the Imagination . 249 

IX. Popular Government by Divine Right . 286 

X. Our Obligations to the Dead 319 

XI. Letter to His Holiness, Pope Gregory 

XVI 356 

XII. Christian Comprehensiveness 386 



I 

BUILDING EEAS IN RELIGION* 



The greatest buildings of the world are not palaces, 
or forums, or amphitheatres, but temples. It may be 
that the Coliseum, able to hold and even to seat a 
hundred thousand people, was a more capacious build- 
ing than was ever erected for the uses of any kind of 
worship, still it was not so much a genuine product of 
architecture as a prodigious freak of royal barbarity. 
And we are therefore none the less permitted to say 
that men do their greatest things for religion. Neither 
is anything better understood than that every relig- 
ion, which has power to get historic place in the world, 
comes to the flower, sooner or later, by asserting visi- 
bility and permanence in stone. It builds, and by that 
token challenges a right to stay, and be known for 
the ages to come ; only it sometimes happens that the 
structures built, like empty shells found strewed upon 
the shore, remain, after both the builders and their 
religions arc forgotten. 

Thus we have the vast temple-works of Central 

* Contributed to the Hours at Home in 1868, Vol. VII. Deliv- 
ered on the occasion of the Consecration of Park Chnrch, Hart- 
ford, Friday evening, r.'arch '29, 1SGT. 



10 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

America, built by we know not whom, or for what 
god. The temple of Karnac, most stupendous of all 
structures, — who was the god, and what the religion, 
we do not know. The Druids of England built the 
prodigious fence of their religion called Stonehenge, 
we know not when, and can only discover that there 
was force enough in their religion to build gigantically. 
The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico kept 
themselves in remembrance chiefly by their temple of 
the Sun, and their altar pile of Cholula, though their 
religions themselves and their very gods are forgot. 
The Buddhist cultus set up its grand masonries all over 
the East, in times so long gone by, that its people 
have now lost the measures of their ancestors, and 
cannot believe in them ; ascribing the stupendous art 
and magnificence of their own Boro-Budor to some 
unknown, giant race. The fanes of the Greeks and 
Romans, and of the later people of Islam, are famil- 
iarly known. So it is that every religion, above the 
rank of mere fetichism, is fated to become, at some 
time, a builder ; matching its ideas and ideal inspira- 
tions by its masonries. 

So it is to be with the ancient Jehovah religion. 
Xine whole centuries must pass before the great 
building day arrives, but it will finally come. Down 
to that late time, there has never anything been built 
for the Jehovah worship, but a tent and a box. So 
long will it take for the great, everlasting ideas of the 
religion to settle the roving or fugacious habit of the 
people, and make them want a temple. History grinds 
slowlv even when it grinds for God. 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 11 

First of all Abraham comes out of the far East as 
a colonist, leading his train of flocks and servants, 
and they go a-gypsying, as all shepherd races do, from 
place to place, making no settlement during his life- 
time. Before three generations are passed, his pos- 
terity become a bond-slave people in Egypt, making 
brick there for hundreds of years, but building noth- 
ing. Then they take a turn of forty years in a cara- 
van state under Moses. Next follows the dark middle 
age of anarchy under the Judges, lasting five hun- 
dred years ; out of which they emerge with scarcely 
a religion left, saying nothing of building for religion. 
Under the wise magistracy and prophet statesman- 
ship of Samuel, the Jewish Washington, they settle 
at last into order. David, who is the most honored 
king and first poet of his country, very soon obtains 
the kingdom. By his great military and civil admin- 
istration, he enlarges rapidly the empire of his nation, 
consolidates their industry, opens a new and great 
commerce, and makes them a first-class power. Mean- 
time, by his religious music, and his religious poetry, 
he kindles a glorious new frame of inspiration in their 
feeling, and lifts them into such conscious preemi- 
nence above all contemporary peoples as properly 
belongs to their religion. Approaching, in this man- 
ner, the close of his reign, a great thought dawns in 
him more and more distinctly, and presses him at last 
quite urgently ; viz., that his work is not complete 
without building, or at least preparing to build, a tem- 
ple for his God ; for he does not propose to execute 



12 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

the work himself, but only to get everything ready 
for his son. He says : " I will make preparation for 
it ; " and right royal is the preparation made. He 
has, in fact, so great an inspiration for it, that the 
very designs and patterns he prepares appear to be 
given him by the Spirit, as chief architect. Yast 
quantities of stone and timber are gathered, including 
precious stones and marbles. And withal there is laid 
up in the treasury gold and silver enough, obtained 
just then in great abundance by the new eastern com- 
merce, to pay off our national debt about sixteen times 
over. For he says : " the house that is to be builded 
for the Lord must be exceeding magnifical, of fame 
and glory throughout all countries." It must be a 
temple, in other words, such as may be worthy of 
monotheism ; that is, of the God of all gods, the Lord 
and Creator of the world. 

Solomon takes the plans and supplies, and for 
seven years and a half the holy hill-top swarms with 
its many thousand workmen, even as the bees at their 
hive. The work is done, and the great building era 
of the Jews' religion is passed ; for the two temples 
afterwards built, under Zerubbabel and Herod, were 
only feeble attempts at restoration on a diminished 
scale. We have no drawings of the first temple and its 
architecture that can be relied on, but as the propor- 
tions were divinely given, it must have had merits 
transcendently high. Covered, as we know it was, 
with plates of gold on every part, and glittering like 
the sun from afar, it was certainly a structure of in- 



BUILDING ERAS IX RELIGION. 13 

comparable splendor. It must have been a prodig- 
iously vast structure also, when taking in the courts, 
which were Integral parts of it considered as a whole, 
and a single one of which covered more than fourteen 
acres of ground. 

Descending now through twenty centuries, we come 
upon a second era, commonly regarded as the consum- 
mate building time of Christianity. I speak of the 
Cathedral age. It was even a building cycle, lasting 
three whole centuries ; and was most remarkable for 
the number, and beauty, and architectural originality 
and grandeur of the structures erected. 

It was long before the new religion could think 
much of building. For a time it had the synagogues of 
the old religion ; small modest houses erected for Scrip- 
ture-reading, exposition, and a common Sabbath wor- 
ship. Driven out of these, it betook itself to the 
quadrangles of courts, and to caves, and catacombs 
underground. Then, by and by, it became a distinctly 
state religion, and was let into the vacated temples of 
the false gods, which it partially remodeled, remod- 
eling itself also to meet the Pagan ideas. 

There was no building as yet, save in a few isolated 
cases. Panic, desolation, poverty, — the barbarians 
of the North pouring, all the while, down across the 
Christian confines, — gave religion a chance for noth- 
ing but faith, and fortitude, and tears. By and by, 
when the vials of this wrath were spent, the barbar- 
ous irruptions, now in the ascendant, were found to 



14 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

have created a new form of society, based in the feudal 
relations and the semi-Christian state of chivalry. For 
the feudal chiefs converted must somehow get a more 
superlative style in the church than the common herd 
of their serfs. Their forward soldiers accordingly 
were made a knightly order about them and took their 
vows of knighthood in ceremonies before the altars ; 
where they swore fealty, (1) to God, (2) to the baron 
or prince they served, and (3) by a volunteer addition, 
to some fair one whose name they relied on to give 
the heroic inspiration. To redeem these rather airy 
pledges was to be their impulse to prowess in arms. 
And this knightly character gave a certain fascinating 
cast to society. True courage, honor, courtesy, all 
high sentiment were in it, and it had withal as great 
inspirations from religion as it well could have, in a 
way so romantic, or so nearly fantastic. It created 
thus a new romantic literature and, partly by help of 
that, a new church militant age. So that, when the 
supreme call of religion was heard, demanding in 
Christ's name the rescue of the holy land from the 
infidels, crusade after crusade followed, in as many 
great waves of enthusiasm. It was very dear enthu- 
siasm, and yet was worth, it may be, all it cost. The 
surviving heroes straggled home, bringing new ideas 
and new germs of life. A great commerce with the 
East followed, and a vast wealth was shortly gathered 
in the coffers of the abbeys and cathedral chapters. 
And now the old heroics of sentiment, the romance, 
the church fervor, took fire in the thought of building 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 15 

for religion, and began to throw itself up in stone as 
by a olivine call. All at once building was everywhere. 
Geometry brought back from the Arab schools was 
put to work in a recomposing and cruciforming, as 
for Christ, of the Arabic elements of architecture. 
Masonry was now the great art, and masons were 
trailing from province to province, or nation to nation, 
according as this or that new structure might require 
their skill and labor. For mutual security and certifi- 
cate, they formed themselves into guilds and societies 
perpetuated even to this day in fraternities of " ac- 
cepted masons," — accepted that is for association's 
sake ; though not understood to be masons at all. 
Out of this immense constructive bee-work, all over 
Christendom, sprang the cathedrals, and the people 
became cathedral-builders about as distinctly as bees 
are wax-builders. Thus went up the magnificent 
Minster of York, the grandly-studied pile of Antwerp, 
the gossamer web of Strasburg, the sublime incipiency 
of Cologne, the mountain peak of St. Stephen's of 
Vienna, and the immortal beauty and unmatched 
miracle of St. Ouen ; not to name well-nigh a hundred 
other celebrated structures, all over Germany, Bel- 
gium, France, and England. David's temple may 
have cost more in the weight of the gold than 
they all, — it probably did, — but gold in that day was 
scarcely a precious metal in comparison. The archi- 
tectural merit meantime of the temple must have been 
vastly inferior ; because, apart from the courts, and 
the external breadth and magnificence added by their 



16 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

circumjection, it was a comparatively small structure. 
It had really no interior but a kind of sanctuary cell, 
whereas the cathedrals open vast heights and spaces 
within, under vaulted skies of stone, — chambers of 
worship for immense gatherings of people, and halls 
of ornament more august than were ever before seen. 
No forest knew how to grow as high, or pillar its 
arches as gracefully. It was as if the stone itself, 
bedded in cruciform lines of foundation, had shot up 
into peaks, and pinnacles, and pointed forms, and 
sprung its flying buttresses across in air, by some up- 
lifting sense, or quickened aspiration. 

What now shall we say ? Do we stop here ? After 
these two building eras, one under the old religion, 
the other under the new, is there to be no other ? The 
architects will answer, No ; because the capacities and 
combinations of lines are now exhausted. The high- 
going ritualists will say, No ; because the cathedrals 
represent the ideal age of the Church and religion 
beyond which nothing more advanced is possible. 
The plain people will say, No, for humility's sake ; 
imagining that all high building slurs the spirituali- 
ties ; not observing that our truest littleness consists 
in doing our greatest things for God. The last-days' 
people will say, No ; because the end is at hand, and 
there is no time left for any building era to come. 
Another class will say, No, more argumentatively ; 
alleging that a worship for the eyes, as in the lifting 
of the host before vast multitudes of people, must give 



BUILDING Kit AS IN RELIGION. 17 

way henceforth to a preaching and hearing exercise, 
and accordingly that only small edifices will hereafter 
he wanted ; such as may be called audience rooms and 
used as stands for preaching. 

Encountering, at the outset, so many kinds of nega- 
tives, we must consent, perhaps, to part company with 
a good many of our readers, in conceiving the possi- 
bility, or probable fact, of any building era more mag- 
nificent hereafter to appear. A great many people, 
a whole major class indeed of the world, are ready 
always to judge that nothing ever can be, which is 
not. What can be more visionary, in fact, than to 
imagine that what has not been ever will be ; that 
what is admired will pass by ; that what is done will 
be outdone ! Sometimes they are greatly delighted 
by the confidence of progress and of some great day 
to come, but that progress can do anything more than 
to just continue and extend the present is quite incredi- 
ble ; they have never carried their mind so far as to 
imagine anything farther. They are going to convert 
the world, and liberate the world, and make all things 
luminous, and completely redintegrate society, but 
how can they imagine that greater men are to be 
seen, and more of them, and greater assemblies gath- 
ered, and new modes of worship and fellowship gener- 
ated, such as will demand structures of another typo 
and vaster dimensions! And how, above all, can any 
but some inveterate dreamer imagine, that architect- 
ure will hereafter puss into new forms, and take body 
in proportions more august ! Had these people of 



18 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

progress without expectation lived in the days when 
the Coliseum was founded, they would have laughed at 
the idea thai*' anything could ever be done in the Greek 
lines of architecture, which had not already been done. 
And yet here is an edifice drawn out in ellipse, com- 
bining in three stories the three Greek orders, with 
walls a hundred feet high and no roof, and vast 
enough to contain more people than all the Greek 
temples of the world together. True, the architecture 
is not very wonderful in its beauty ; no matter for 
that, it was actually built, and was quite as finely con- 
ceived as the barbarous and abominable uses could 
any way fitly inspire. Twenty years before, there was 
never to be any such great superstructure, and the 
man who should suggest the possibility would be 
mocked by the whole world's laughter ! And yet 
now, here it is, just because an emperor has risen 
barbarous enough in his taste and surrounded by a 
people barbarous enough in their servility, to delight 
in the scenes which this hell of inhumanity is to 
exhibit ! Why then should it be thought impossible 
that the regenerative, out-spreading, all -transforming 
power of our gospel, should sometime be able, in the 
glorious instinct of its fellowship, to do as great a 
thing also as it may want, whenever it is wanted ? If 
we do not believe that other Coliseums are yet to be 
built on a much grander scale, why should they not, 
save that we so confidently hope the world will not be 
wicked enough and coarse enough to want them ? 
After allfit is the particular fault of our great expect- 



BUILDING Ell AS IN RELIGION. 19 

I 

biicies, that we do not expect anythingJ Without 
knowing it, we tacitly assume that nothing is to appear 
beyond our scale, and that our machine is really to 
run but a short time longer, finishing off at last in 
the ordinary ! On the contrary, just everything indi- 
cates, it seems to me, that these present times are 
God's beginnings, and we almost see with our eyes 
that the world is but an egg unhatched as yet ; prep- 
aration, possibility, nothing more. It will take a long 
time yet to finish the plan, — ages upon ages, " world 
without end," as the doxology sings, — for it is not go- 
ing to be a losing plan, as it would be if it were to be 
ended now. It will yet go on, we may believe, propa- 
gating salvation, character, saintship, brotherhood, in- 
telligence, and glory, not for some hundreds, but more 
probably for some hundred thousands of years, till the 
populations of the redeemed souls preponderate so 
vastly as to throw all computations of loss out of 
mind. Great things in this view are yet to be done 
here, and we must not too soon conclude that nothing 
is to appear, transcending what is or has been. 

There has never before been a time, we may see 
at a glance, when such vast assemblies could be gath- 
ered at single points as now, if there were any occa- 
sion for it. Our railroad circulations could hurl in, 
almost any day, on the great centres, a hundred or 
five hundred thousand people. Structures too can be 
raised, if they are wanted, large enough to shelter 
and contain them all, and if we ask what they can do 
by coining together in such multitudes, and how they 



20 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

can be wielded in a manner to answer any practical 
purpose, it may, or may not be easy to specify the par- 
ticular object and way beforehand. But it is a remark- 
able fact that a particular invention, just now com- 
pleted, organizes a brain, or sensorium, for the whole 
living world, and can much more easily do it for 
whole acres of living assembly. We can even set 
all choirs and organs, in every part of our State, or 
nation, upon a perfect chime of time-beat, in any 
given anthem, at any given hour of night or day ; 
and who can say what uses may yet be served in as- 
semblies by these courier threads of wire in the long 
grand future before us ? If Holiness to the Lord is 
to be written on the bells of the horses, why not on 
these wires, which are so much closer to intelligence ? 
We know very little, as yet, what is to come of these 
and such like instrumentations. God no doubt has 
some very grand chapters of advance to be revealed 
in their religious uses, such as our slow-going imagin- 
ations are not likely at once to overtake. 

This one thing, meantime, is clear as it need be, 
that we are going to have resources for building, if 
building is wanted, that have never yet been devoted 
to any such purpose. We have more wealth now in our 
roadways, measured in creative industry, than Solo- 
mon put into his temple, and it is not money spent as 
with him, but money invested for a larger production. 
The powers we have now at work are creating untold 
wealth, such as was never before seen, and is not now 
conceived. Becoming less airy and pretentious too, as 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 21 

it becomes more common, wealth will be entered more 

easily into the finest perceptions and loftiest ideals of 
religion. It will have its inspirations, and will join 
itself to the brotherhood of the saints in all the grand 
purposes and fervors of their advancing cause. 
Wealth has a new grand chapter thus to write; and 
having all utmost ability, it will as certainly become 
a great builder, as there is found to be any Christian 
occasion for it. And it will be strange, if resources 
so immensely great do not sometime appear in struc- 
tures that, for magnitude and majesty, are unequaled. 
And we need not be afraid lest the art of building 
should be found to have come to its limit. There is 
a beautifully artless art in sanctified souls, raising 
them, age upon age, into higher capacities of form, 
because their perception is holier and closer to eternal 
truth*/ Supposing then, that no new forms and orders 
are ever to be added, any least inventive bigot of 
routine can see, that putting down a Greek cross for 
the centre, and drawing out the four limbs into four 
Latin crosses, a most perfect five-fold whole can be 
constructed of any conceivable extent. There is also 
a kind of architectural effect proposed by Ezekiel, in 
his mystic temple, that has never yet been exhausted ; 
it has not, in fact, been tried, save in a very limited 
way in a few of the most picturesque Middle Age 
structures. It proposes a cutting into the walls ol 
the structure, built immensely thick, of open corridors 
and open stairways, to be used in processions that shall 
be seen moving onward and back, and up and down, 



22 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

all over the structure, without and within, and mak- 
ing it alive with marching hosts of praise. As 
describing it, the prophet says : " And the side-cham- 
bers (galleries, corridors) were three, one over an- 
other, and thirty in order ; and they entered into the 
wall. * * * And there was an enlarging and a 
winding about still upward to the side-chambers ; for 
the winding about of the house went still upward 
round about the house." * In this way, as it will be 
seen, the vast stone pile was to be made alive as if it 
were some ant-hill of worship, and have the living 
multitudes of the people for its ornamentation. And 
who shall say that new ideas and forms shall not here- 
after be invented ? Is it possible, — can we be so weak 
as to think it, — that these immeasurable ages to come 
are never to go beyond the present alphabet of archi- 
tecture and its elements ? What have we done by 
our geologic explorations, but set open the temple of 
the creation, showing how the several tiers and stories 
rise upon each other, and how it is garnished by the 
wondrous living creatures that have bedded their fig- 
ures in the stone ; all which, in some age of holy and 
believing science yet to come, may suggest, we know 
not what new combinations of constructive art ? And 
when the great new-creation day, or day of the Spirit, 
which we all look for, arrives, will it not be the day 
of the Dove, in symbols and constructions that pre 

sent the spiritualities hovering now above and through 

. ■ < 

*Ezek. xli, 6, 7 



BUI LI) IXC ERAS IN RELIGION. 23 

all cruciform order and structure, as the Pentecost 
hovers in the sky of Calvary ? We stammer, of 
course, in all such half-discerning suggestions. Our 
guesses are weak. But new-born fact, when it comes, 
will show us something not weak. 

So far, we arc looking at the ways and means and 
possibilities of another building age or ages. Let us 
look here for a moment, into what wants may be ris- 
ing to require it. After all, this cathedral age that 
we so commonly copy and praise, and sometimes idol- 
ize, is a great way off from being completely and gen- 
uinely Christian. Knighthood and grim war flavor 
all the grace there is in it. The worship too, is to be 
altar-worship ; not as commemorating the offering 
once for all, but before and around the grand altar 
set in the focal point of the edifice, where priests are 
to be waving their incense, and offering always Christ's 
new-created body for the people to Avorship. They 
come as to an offertory therefore, and not as to the 
hospitality of a " table." Meantime, the structure it- 
self is called a cathedral, because the bishop is con- 
ceived to be sitting in cathedra there, as presiding 
in the functions of his spiritual lordship. The prepar- 
tions of the place, grand as they are in their forms, 
have a look that is partly alien ; representing the 
swollen pomp of authority, and back of all, a power 
that deals with religion specially, as being patron to 
it, and having it in charge. 

Now it is not difficult to see, that something differ- 
ent from this, and more advanced, and built upon a 



24 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

larger scale, is yet to be demanded. We are to look, 
in particular, for something more nearly in the type 
of the Pentecost, and the new brotherly communion 
there displayed. Had there been thrown up there, on 
the instant, a structure vast enough to accommodate 
the uses of the many thousand converts, it would not 
have been a cathedral, or bishop' s-seat edifice, but it 
would have been something more fitly called a Koino- 
nial, or House of Communion. Or it might have been 
called the House of the Dove, or, tipped with Spirit- 
fire on all the summits without, the House of Flame. 
No matter what the name, if only we distinguish the 
thing ; a temple for the communion of saints, and 
their worship in the Spirit, vast enough to take in all 
the immense crowds of pilgrims there gathered; "Par- 
tisans, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in 
Mesopotamia, and Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus 
and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the 
parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews 
and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians," — all brothers 
now in the brotherhood of Christ begun, — breaking 
bread together, and joining in the solid unity of their 
worship with all gladness and singleness of heart. In 
the first two crops of converts harvested here at the 
beginning, we have a count of five thousand souls, 
who, instead of going from house to house in the 
breaking of bread, would have rushed in, by the in- 
stinct of their love, to fill any common temple large 
enough to receive them. 

And in just the same way admitting, as we proba 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 25 

bly should, that our people arc to be trained or disci- 
pled in small bodies and hearing assemblies, there will 
almost certainly be, as there always have been, occa- 
sions where vaster assemblies will desire to be gath- 
ered and have their brotherhood,tobeheldinalarger 
bond of communion. Within a few years past there 
has been a Sunday-school gathering in England, which 
probably no one of their cathedrals would have con- 
tained. 

If our Baptist friends are right in assuming that 
the whole church of God is coming to their practice 
at last, they ought to expect that in some of the great 
cities Baptisteries may be wanted vast enough to be 
canopied only by the sky, like the Coliseum. We are 
having great crowds gathered in the name of our 
Christian Association, and shall probably have still 
greater in the years to come, such as can be assembled 
only in some vast koinonial structure, nowhere now to 
be found. Within a very few days past there has 
been held in the Crystal Palace, a grand commemora- 
tion of Handel, where a choir of three thousand gath- 
ered an audience of twenty thousand. It would not 
be more strange than some other things which have 
happened, that within a ten years' time, the Evangeli- 
cal Alliance, raised to the higher pitch and more 
catholic scope of its calling, should be gathering 
assemblies of saints, as it were by nations ; such as 
will require more space than any Hall of Exposition, 
or Crystal Palace, would be able to afford them. 

Besides we are not to forget that great movements, 



26 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

now beginning all over the world, foretoken vast 
assemblages of believers flowing together in a sublime 
concourse of brotherhood. The eternal Spirit is hov- 
ering over the nations and setting them in upon closer 
and closer bonds of amity, such as must be finally 
sealed by the Christian inspirations. " Lift up thine 
eyes round about and see ; all these gather themselves 
together, and come to thee ; " Catholic, and Greek, 
and Protestant, all as one. The abundance of the sea, 
all the forces of the Gentiles, from China round, will 
as certainly come into the circuit of one love, as into 
that of commerce and diplomacy, and it will result 
that, in these vast new confluences, there will be great 
assemblages gathered, wanting structures where they 
may be. Besides, in that great day which we think 
the Spirit is preparing, we can see, at a glance, that 
changes will be coming to pass that will demand great 
feasts and anthems of koinonial worship, such as our 
world-brotherhood has never yet imagined. 

We have been split up, for example, by many thous- 
and debates, trying to settle bases of unity by the set- 
tlement of opinions. But these notional points or 
entities breed, as we find, only sects and sub-divisions 
without end, and all our longings after the complete 
fellowship are disappointed. But when these nits, of 
opinion are all hatched, these dissidences all worn out, 
and the " one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
and in all," begin to be felt as the uppermost fact 
and grandest faith, before which all opinions are to be 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 27 

schooled into their places, by that time we sink as it 
were in final gravitation downward on the state of 
unity. We si uill flow together, most likely, with an 
ardor of brotherhood now inconceivable. The road- 
ways will be rivers of men, crowding downwards on 
the centres of appointed fellowship, and the assemblies 
gathered will not be satisfied with anthems that are 
not as the waves of the sea. f 

And so again it will be, when the immense impos- 
ture of the Popehood ,goes down. When that priest- 
hood and all priesthood goes down, letting God's 
armies of believers forth into the enlarged liberties of 
his kingdom, it will be the new grand birth-day morn- 
ing of Christian brotherhood. Protestant is no more, 
Catholic is no more, but Christ is all, and there will 
be no cathedrals large enough to be more than side 
chapels of the Grand Houses of Unity now required. 
St. Peter's will now dwindle to a toy, and the great 
koinonials, if so we please to call them, — cathedrals 
they will not be, — will so far have their place. There 
will here be no pulpits, it may be, or preaching-stands ; 
no altar, for the sacrifice is ended, gone by for ever ; 
no priest or priestly vestments, for Christ the only 
and last priest is gone up on high ; there will be no 
dividing screen behind which, in their choir, the 
canons are heard chanting out of sight in male voice 
only : but the whole wide space within, crowded from 
wall to wall with its many thousand worshipers, will 
be itself the choir, canons all themselves, male and 
female, lifting their own grand hymn, or Hallelujah 



28 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

together ; so that, as the gospel itself is not a salva* 
tion for half the world but for all, the glorious sopranos 
will now have their part, floating clear above and 
fluting heavenly sanctities on the top of so great 
masses of sound. 

There is also yet another change to be anticipated, 
when the promised day of the Spirit arrives, that will 
naturally bring together immense conventicles of a 
kind more severely grand, because of the stupendous 
intellectual consolidation supposed. I refer to the 
final reconciliation of science and religion. There is 
no real discord between them. The natural and the 
supernatural, science and faith, have a unity of rela- 
tion as complete as any right and left hand. And 
yet it has not hitherto been easily discovered ; for we 
have just now a large dissent on hand that disallows 
all miracle, takes away the possibility of prayer, and 
weakens and chills, in a thousand ways, the faith of 
religion itself. It is partly the fault of a narrow- 
minded way in the disciples and professed champions 
of religion, and partly the fault of an over hasty and 
falsely tempered intellectual conceit, in the forward 
teachers and expounders of nature. The schism is an 
old one, really as old as the world ; viz., a conflict be- 
tween thinking and believing ; only the strife is now 
being drawn closer as the system of science and the 
habit of thinking in the terms of causes are more 
stringently set. Many are greatly concerned lest all 
faith and all supernatural truth should be subsiding 
now into final contempt. Christianity they fear has 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 29 

come to its limit and is ready to die. Far from that 
as possible. On the contrary this fearful closing in 
of the conflict is but a convergence towards the set- 
tlement of it. The point of comprehension is now 
being reached, where it shall be seen that nature and 
the supernatural are joint factors, ab eterno, in God's 
kingdom, complementary one to the other and not 
contrary. And when the conclusion is fully estab- 
lished, entered into the mind both of science and 
religion, they will be forever atoned and reconciled to 
each other in a solid and compact unity. They will 
now be forward to recognize each other in the great 
fraternity of God, and will want occasions where they 
may say, u all hail," to each other, and set forth their 
common revelations. No fact ever took place in the 
world at all comparable to this reconciliation of science 
and religion, save the reconciliation of the great world- 
schism made by sin itself; and indeed this other 
reconciliation is never completed and set in the dignity 
of reason, without the other. Faith henceforth will 
not be timorous any more, for it is now become the 
congener of all reason. It will even be scientific 
to believe, and there will be a vaster, broader 
enthusiasm kindled for the great brotherhood of 
religion, than has ever yet been conceived. / It will be 
the Creator-worship and Redeemer-worship joined, 
and the assemblies will want spaces and symbols in 
which the brotherhood of all fact and truth may be 
fitly acknowledged. _y / 

What occasions there may be for great assemblies, 



30 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

and what vaster structures may be wanted for their 
use, appear to be now sufficiently shown. If any 
should ask at this point, by what precise uses, or modes 
of use, these structures will be occupied, we shall be 
much at fault of course. I have already suggested a 
possible use of the telegraphic instrumentation, throw- 
ing out sentiments in printed forms which the vastest 
conceivable assemblies may respond to in thunders of 
assent ; petitions of prayer set forth to which the 
common Amen will make answer as by the sound of 
many waters; anthems, and chants, and hymns, and pub- 
lic te deums, that will command the common voice of as 
many organs and choirs as will be wanted for whole 
acres of assembly. Holy processions too may be timed 
by hymns and marches in the galleries of walls that 
are alive with worship. We know nothing of all this. 
It is not for us to appoint these matters. We only 
see that there will be great movements of brother- 
hood, and great feeling wanting expression, and the 
men of the times will know how to find it without 
help from us. Enough to know that there are great 
days yet to come ! Would that we could see them ! 
— and perhaps we shall. 

Since now it will seem to some of you, as already 
anticipated, that I have been venturesome or vision- 
ary in these suggestions, let it be remembered that 
what is written in the Scripture is far more visionary 
in its way, and promises more. In the last chapters 
of Ezekiel and of John, we have I know not what 
revelations of a great building era to come. Both 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 31 

describe and give, as by definite measurements, the 
proportions of a vast oew city. The name of the 
city, according to one, is, The Lord is Th r< . The 
other calls it, Th- New Jerusalem. According to one, 
there is to be a temple in the city ; according to the 
other, no temple at all, but a throne of universal wor- 
ship : which comes back very nearly to the same 
thing. If it should be imagined that these archi- 
tectural pictures relate to the perfect state of the 
blessed hereafter, that may be true: but it will be 
true only as a glorious kind of city life in God has 
been first produced here, flowing into that by transi- 
tion. In one of the cities, a healing stream is seen 
flowing out from under the threshold of the temple, 
which symbolizes, of course, the universal healing of 
the gospel. In the other, the very city itself is to be 
seen descending out of heaven from God, and all the 
glory and honor of the nations are represented as be- 
ing gathered into it. All which indicates, it will be 
seen, a great moral regeneration here below. And if 
I have been right, exactly this moral and spiritual 
regeneration is going to require a great building age 
for its uses, which, again, appears to be shown us in 
these prophetic pictures. However much they are 
spiritualized, it will be very difficult to give them any 
construction that does not imply the actual building 
of something transcendency vast and impressive. It 
may not be true that any city will be built that is lit- 
erally three hundred and seventy-five miles square 
and three hundred and seventy-five miles high, as in 



32 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

John's description. But these definite measures, and 
all the twelves of the foundations and the gates, repre- 
senting the twelve apostles of the Lamb, show at 
least that a very exactly finished, cubically squared 
society is understood, which exactness will be some- 
how represented in the definitely composed forms of 
their constructions. How too could it happen, if these 
prophecies are to be sublimated into merely moral 
significances, that one of them even thinks out a 
scheme of ornamentation perfectly original, hitherto 
scarcely used at all, yet having scope enough to create a 
new order of architecture, and the grandest, most soul- 
quickening spectacle of composition ever conceived ? 

We see then, — for this is the sum of all we have 
been saying, — that the Holy Spirit organizes, himself, 
the communion of saints, and will as certainly make 
places or build houses for it in his times. Building 
for religion is no such carnal thing, in this view, as 
many think ; and if we build well, what else should 
we do, when we are building for God ? We so far 
put ourselves in connection with a great instinct of 
religion, and with eras to come, when the grandest 
doxologies, and most hallowed prayers, and widest 
human brotherhoods, will be mounting into stone by 
the upward lift of their affinities. Far be it from us 
to reflect, in the suggestions here offered, on the dig- 
nity of our common audience chambers, or preaching- 
stands, called churches. Still farther be it from us to 
stir up any puffy conceit ; as if, in the building of 



BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 33 

these, we were doing something very magnificent, 
such as belongs to the last great day and final glory 
of our religion. We need, first of all, to understand 
that this is the day of small things, and not despise 
the day of small things because a greater is to come. 
Probably never, in the most advanced age of religion, 
will our small structures, called churches, be dis- 
pensed with. They are, and are always to be, our 
synagogues, standing in the succession of the syna- 
gogues, and not in the succession of the temple, as 
many are forward without right to assume. These 
had no priesthood and no altar. They were the peo- 
ple-houses of religion, where they came together every 
Sabbath, to read the word, and offer their interpreta- 
tions, and blend their prayers. And these synagogues 
were the really interesting places of the old religion, 
far more interesting, in most respects, than the tem- 
ple. Who can ever think, without profoundest respect 
and tenderness, of the dear old synagogue of Nazareth, 
where Christ attended, " as his custom was," and 
where he began his ministry, standing up to read, and 
saying when he had done : " This day is this Scrip- 
ture fulfilled in your ears" ? What scenes took place 
too in one synagogue or another, almost every Sab- 
bath, under Christ's ministry ; in Capernaum, in all 
the synagogues of the country towns, in all the four 
hundred and more of Jerusalem ! And then after- 
ward, wherever the apostles went to preach Christ in 
foreign cities, — in Damascus, in Antioch, in Alexan- 
dria, in Corinth and Philippi, — here it was that they 



34 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 

found a place and freedom for their testimony. 
Hither, in like manner, we mnst come for all high 
schooling in the faith. Here we are to get our in- 
citements, corrections, reproofs, consolations, sacra- 
mental food, and dearest helps of brotherhood ; for as 
these were always, so they are always to be, our 
schools of godliness. 

And } r et it cannot be less than immensely import- 
ant, as we cast our eye forward, and take our auguries 
of the future, that we do not cram it with people and 
things in our own petty measures. As we expect a 
great future, so we must expect to have something 
great done in it. And I know not anything that will 
fire us with higher thoughts and tone our energies for 
a loftier key, than to see just what our prophets saw 
with so great triumph, glorious ages of building for 
God, such as never were beheld before ; a city of God, 
or it may be many, complete in all grandeur and 
beauty, and representing fitly the great ideas, and 
glorious populations, and high creative powers of a 
universal Christian age. 



II. 

THE NEW EDUCATION." 



We agree, in common speech, to call educated men, 
" men of letters" understanding by the term such as 
have been trained in the classics and the literatures of 
the Greek and Latin peoples. For the time was, at 
the revival of learning so-called, when there was noth- 
ing else to begin at and learn from. Plato, Aristotle, 
Greek and Latin poems, histories and orations, were 
the general stock of the world's mental furniture. It 
was letters then or nothing. And a glorious quicken- 
ing of mind began thus at the study of letters, whence 
alone it could. So by a kind of scholarly prescription, 
we fell into the opinion, for a time, that letters are 
and must be the staple matter of all high education. 

But there was a day of things to come, as of letters ; 
for when things arrive at knowledge in the discov- 
eries of science, they too will claim the right to be 
educators, taking the place, or sharing the place, of 
letters. And as letters are the mind-stock furnished 
by men, so things will be the stock of endowment 

* Delivered at New Haven before the Sheffield Scientific School, 
at Commencement, 1870. 

(35) 



6b THE NEW EDUCATION. 

bodied in God's own works. Their revelations, so 
long hidden from discovery, will come out now as in 
fresh glory, setting mind aglow with new intelli- 
gence. And they will uncover such new ranges of 
thought, and such worlds-full of meaning, in a method 
so exactly, gloriously, conformed to mind, that if the 
great human teachers, such as Plato and Aristotle, 
had but caught the sense of them, it is even doubtful 
whether they would have been able to think of any- 
thing else. Who of us indeed will not be set on fire 
himself, if once it occurs to him to ask how it must 
have gone with either of these two, — Plato, for exam- 
ple, — had he been allowed to spread his great soul 
suddenly out on things and grasp their science as we 
do to-day ? His name would have been Plato still, 
and might possibly have come down to us ; but the 
man, the character that filled that name, must have 
been wholly another, glorious enough doubtless, but 
yet with another sort of glory. Finding how, in that 
strangely gifted moment, to untwist the threads and 
score the angles and velocities of light ; flashing in 
telescopic vision across the abysses, and formulating 
the forces and times of the sky ; questioning and get- 
ting answer from the clouds, whence they rise, and 
how they carry their loads of thunder and rain ; 
unyoking analytically the atoms of the world, and be- 
holding the rush of their attractions, moving all in 
regimental count and squadrons of formulae ; finding- 
how color is magically hid in the colorless white beam 
of the day ; and having opened to his inspection the 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 37 

miraculous gcometrizings of the crystal growths ; dis- 
tinguishing the layers and times of the rocks below, 
and reading, so to speak, in their tables of stone, the 
autograph record of innumerable populations, dead 
and gone before the stone itself was made ; able also, 
canvassing mere upper surface, where agriculture digs 
and delves for bread, to hear exactly what the soils 
ask for to put them in fertility, and set their deserts 
blooming in fresh growths ; and yet, once more, and 
what is more than all, if he could have gotten full 
note of the forces unheard, trooping through the 
masses and affinities of substance, — light, heat, at- 
traction, magnetism, — conceiving the innumerable 
engines and machineries that will sometime put them 
in harness for the draught, to plough through even 
wide oceans against the tides and storms, to whirl 
across whole continents in journeys that are races, to 
leap even thousands of miles through gulfs miles deep, 
and come out in swift couriership and dry, with mes- 
sages rushed through the paths of the sea ; — if, I say, 
great Plato could have sent his thought through these 
and other such-like stupendous revelations of science, 
in some brief time, and come out with any breath 
left in him, what would have been his first word to 
the young men of his Academy, and what would he 
have bid them study but these new, fresh-born, all- 
wondrous things ! " Here, behold ! is true high argu- 
ment for you, such as neither I, nor Socrates, nor all 
sages and poets could ever think before." 

And what now of the Dialogues, what of the Ita 



38 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

public, what of all the fine papers he was going to 
write for us ? Ah, I fear he would -have dropped them 
incontinently out of mind, made a full end of them ! 
And glad enough truly we have a right to be, that no 
such stunning revelation befell him ; for the loss of 
these would have been even the more irreparable that 
we could never have known it. 

Now any one of us who has barely swept over the 
field of modern science, in this rapid way of mental 
excursion, must clearly see, I think, that in such new 
arrival of things, a new education, in some good sense 
of the terms, must also have arrived. The world itself 
is now become God's classic, a book that is perfect in 
the method, grand in the subject, and full of all deep- 
est insight; having more language for mind in it, 
more idea, meaning, music, logical endowment, inter- 
penetration of beauty and force, many times more to 
raise intelligence, and be the ensouling both of order 
and flame, than there is or possibly can be in all the 
contributions of letters or of classic genius in all the 
past ages ; — dwarfed, of course, by man's infantile 
quantities, and flawed by mortal blemish. Sorry 
match enough all books of man, for God's book writ- 
ten in things. 

Since the world then, set forth by science, is become, 
as it were, a new intelligible congener at all points to 
mind, something like a new education, it is plain be- 
forehand, must result ; and a large debate is now 
going on as to what the change shall be. Some will 
only modernize the academic courses in the manner of 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 8 ( J 

our American colleges, adding new studies as new 
sciences arrive. Some will vote the classics dead and 
lei them go. Others will only include them in a list 
of optionals, made up in no unity of reason, but hete- 
rogenic as the caprices of choice may be, making 
thus no proper university, but a proper omnibus rather 
on a four years' trip, with any such inside as will take 
the passage. I cannot undertake to discuss this very 
heavy matter here, and happily I need not, because it 
is already decided. Enough that on this ground there 
are to be two organizations : first, the old Academic 
College, working for all ages by essentially the same 
gymnastic plan ; and secondly, a new College of Prac- 
tical Science that belongs more particularly to the 
present age and its wants. I only suggest, with a 
certain feeling of satisfaction that there is a distribu- 
tion of nature which very nearly corresponds, a dis- 
tribution, that is, of studies for what is inherent and 
for what is in use, of the pure mathematics and the 
applied, of theoretic science and practical science, of 
skill in the classic tongues and of skill in this or that 
spoken language. If it should be our opinion that 
as good classics are written now in our modern lan- 
guages as are brought us in the ancient, still our 
tongue itself dates from their dead motherhood, and 
to that we must go, alivays and forever, to master it. 
That is the distinctively elegant learning, because it 
is the only kind of learning that takes us back to the 
word of our mother, and the first principles of our 
own tongue. 



40 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

What I propose then, at the present time, is to 
have such debate as we may, on the office and place 
of the scientific school ; providing a shorter course of 
study for such as have only shorter means ; a course 
better adapted, apart from all consideration of means, 
for the best advance of a certain class of minds ; and 
especially a course that will prepare a new great age 
of business faculty, such as notoriously the college 
training does not. The school of practical science, 
added to the fixed courses of the college plan, pro- 
poses, in fact, a universalizing of the university idea ; 
that as we have schools of theology and law and 
medicine, with military schools outside, to serve the 
military uses, so we are to have as many schools of 
applied science as there are kinds of arts to be scien- 
tifically shaped and helped. 

All along, in our scientific gestation period, we have 
been moving on this issue, unawares to ourselves, and 
now at last the day of birth is come. For here, 
exactly, is the place and office which our Connecticut 
Scientific School, the Sheffield, is engaged to fill, 
wherein it is entitled to a degree of consideration, 
which it has by no means received as yet from 
our people. Most of them have heard that such 
a school exists, and is somehow engaged to give 
scientific help to agriculture, mining, metallurgy, en- 
gineering, and the right application of the mechani- 
cal forces : but by what strides of progress, almost 
transcending belief, it is moving forward on a great 
future they do not know. Having only such endow- 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 41 

nient as sufficed for the stale of infancy, it has al- 
ready outgrown both the endowment and the infancy, 
gathering in a large corps of teachers, resolute men, 
gifted with all highest qualifications, and above all, 
able to find much bread in their enthusiasm. By the 
unwonted force of that, backed by their formerly 
single benefactor, who is now being joined by others ; 
having also a small agricultural fund in the public 
lands, they have gotten their halls and laboratories 
and cabinets and all best kinds of apparatus, and 
have gathered in. by their successes in teaching, a 
larger and larger following of pupils, till now, at last, 
they count as many on the ground as one hundred 
and forty, putting their institution far in advance 
of all other like institutions in the country, un- 
less West Point be taken as an exception. Having 
won for it such precedence, almost gratis, they have 
certainly won a right also to live and have their en- 
dowment solidly made up to them ; for they, plainly 
enough, cannot live on their enthusiasm always. And 
this, exactly, is getting to be the opinion of many, as 
we see by the growing additions made to their funds ; 
for since they bear the flag so well, we are learning 
to have it as the point of honor to send them bravely 
on with cheers. 

But I am not here to speak as their advocate, partly 
because they do not ask it, and partly because they 
can do it for themselves much better than I can do it for 
them. What I am going to say. therefore, will not be 
for this particular school, but for the general subject. 



42 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

It does not appear to have been observed, as it very 
well might be, that the progress of natural science 
must finally bring on just the crisis which has now 
arrived ; placing every people or nation that expects 
to have a forward position in the world, under a fixed 
necessity of culture in the uses of science. What 
immense strides have been made in all works of en- 
terprise and arts of production, under the new-dis- 
covered laws and principles, is sufficiently observed 
and is even a stale kind of story. But the end is not 
yet ; the story is only begun. 

The one single science of chemistry, for example, 
what has it not done ? See the old dead-matter world, 
dead and impotent all through, even as omnipotent 
steam is dead in the quiet inefficiency of water, quick- 
ened, so to speak, in every dullest atom, and leaping 
out in fiery potency to stir whatever stirs for it ; gases 
innumerable, new creatures altogether, getting free, 
to be known as the ghost-world of matter ; new 
metals, new salts, solvents, colors, oils, pigments ; 
old quantities inert made thunders of ; navigation 
re-created and oceans reduced to ponds ; whole months 
of old-fashioned time condensed into single days ; 
freights, bulletins, populations, thoughts, put whirl- 
ing as in mazes of new celerity ; fires, forges, wheels, 
laboratories innumerable, and shops that are populous 
towns, — where shall we stop recounting only what this 
single science has done ? 

And yet all this we seem to think, because the 
science new-born has so far applied itself. What need 



T ii E NEW EDUCATION. 43 

then have we of schools to conduct such applications ? 
All the greater need, I answer, that so many wider, 
vaster applications are not made, but are only ready 
to be. See how it goes with iron and steel. What 
have Ave better known, since even Tubal-cain's day, 
than how to make them, work them and get a great 
part of our civilization out of them ? And yet our 
processes have been so changed within a very few 
years that we seem to have known just nothing about 
chem. Our chemists showed us first how steel is differed 
from iron by the union of carbon. We enjoyed the 
really important discovery for a long time, when by 
and by the further discovery followed that pig-iron 
only contained too much carbon. Whereupon Besse- 
mer puts himself to burning out a part of the carbon, 
so as to leave what before was pig-iron, steel, instead 
of roasting carbon into iron already decarbonized. 
He succeeded, but found on trial that he could not 
stop the burning-out process accurately enough to 
make the new method work evenly, as it must to be 
available. Not to be defeated so, he took his lesson 
at first principles again, and began once more, pro- 
posing now to burn out all the carbon in his principal 
retort, having another slung by its side, with just 
enough in it, by weight, of the supercarbonized pig 
not burned but only melted, to give the needed stock 
of carbon for all. Thus at every step of his invention 
he was feeling after steel in pig-iron by strict laws of 
chemistry, till finally he came down square upon it. 
His problem was triumphantly and heroically finished. 



44 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

So that now, by one of the grandest strides ever made 
in the arts, he is girdling the world with cast-steel in 
a way that makes it only a little more expensive kind 
of iron. 

The same story exactly is just now ready in respect 
to coal. Did Ave not know all about it, and how to 
get the heat of it, a long time ago ? But the new 
Siemens furnace, utilizing it by first turning it into 
gas and burning that in a blast of hot air, abstracting 
also the heat as it is used, and storing it in bricks to 
be used a dozen times over, saving a whole four-fifths 
of the expense, — what is this profoundly cunning fetch 
of economy but au application, yesterday, of principles 
of science well known long ago, and waiting to be thus 
applied ? 

So of all the other sciences ; our application of them 
is yet scant and imperfect. Of the $2,000,000,000 
already expended for railroads in our country, what 
do they tell us but that 20 per cent, at least, — $400,- 
000,000, — has been thrown away by bad engineering, 
such as more and better science would have avoided. 
And what do we hear, but that our own young 
school of science has already saved money enough to 
the State, by simply exposing the worthlessness of 
worthless manures, to endow it ten times over more 
sufficiently than it can ever hope to be endowed ? 

It could not be more plain, in short, that as a peo- 
ple we have interests of growth and production de- 
pending on a more scientific equipment in our processes, 
than many of us are vet able to conceive. We are a 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 45 

proverbially sharp-witted people, and we make a great 
many lucky hits of invention, because our wits are 
nimbled for almost anything by our ambitious but 
rather light and thin education. But thriving thus by 
our wits and by lucky accidents and conditions will 
not hold us long. Solid endowments are indispensa- 
ble in the long run. And how much does it signify 
that we probably have not any two men, in all our 
shops and superintendencies, who, without more 
science, could ever have discovered the cast-steeling 
process of Bessemer or the heating process of Siemen ! 
Down to the time of the Great Exhibition of London, 
the British people, having such advantages in their 
supplies of coal and iron, felt sure of an easy prece- 
dence in all the arts depending on these two staples. 
Meantime the great French iron-mongering, machine- 
building establishments of Creusot, every day enlarg- 
ing, are becoming schools of monitorial instruction, 
so to speak, where their designers and workmen are 
being trained in eye and hand, in scientific adjust- 
ments and the propagations of forces, in the study of 
forms and the sciences and graces of mechanical 
movement, and behold it comes out, in the Great 
Exposition at Paris, that the shops of British art are 
ignominiously beaten at every point ! Their designs 
are coarse and clumsy ; their engines are so badly con- 
structed, as respects the saving of heat and of iron and 
also of friction, as to virtually put them out of the market. 
And it has actually resulted since, that the English 
railroads are importing locomotive engines largely from 



46 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

France. It would even be amusing, if it were a little 
less sad, to hear the four great committees of English- 
men, comprising the aristocracy of the realm at one 
end, and the skilled workmen at the other, returning 
from the French Exposition, testifying in reports that 
have the minor key and the sound almost of a cry, 
that England must have schools of applied science, or 
else go down utterly in the arts of production. 

Shortly after, so great is the concern excited by 
this discomfiture, that J. Scott Russell, of " Great 
Eastern " celebrity, a man of the highest capacity and 
a thoroughly trained scholar, hastens or is hastened 
off to the Continent to re-examine the schools of tech- 
nical science, with which he was already acquainted, 
and make his report of them. He comes back, telling 
his people very frankly that they are the worst edu- 
cated nation of Europe. He spreads out the grand 
scheme of technical training in Prussia. He describes 
the magnificent Polytechnicum of little Switzerland, 
at Zurich, showing how it is already drawing off some 
of the finest, daintiest kinds of manufacture both from 
England and France, giving to this poor little people, 
having neither coal nor iron, a fair large part of the 
world's most productive industries. He spreads out 
in particular the art education map of the little duchy 
of Wiirtemberg, comprising 1,700,000 people, showing- 
how everything is taught scientifically, as respects the 
principal arts of life, even down to the shoeing of 
horses, and tells his countrymen that if they were to 
provide instruction according to the same ratio of 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 47 

supply, they would have 11 universities of applied 
science, with 49 professors each, and more than 5,000 
students ; 11 subordinate trade schools or colleges, 
with 26 professors each, and 6,500 students ; and sub- 
ordinate to these, in towns and villages, 1,180 schools, 
having 425 masters and more than 8,000 pupils; 
whereas, in place of all these, they have now almost 
nothing to show but a high university education, which 
rises to its summit in classical and logical studies, — 
dead the first by time, and dead the second by nature, 
because it is too dry to be alive ; both having only the 
least relation possible to uses in life's productive 
works. 

The point, then, at which we arrive in this economic 
exposition, is briefly this : that a new crisis now is 
pending for the nations, pending for us as truly as for 
any ; for whatever nations or peoples get most for- 
ward practically in science, we now begin to see, must 
bring all others under. And this is just as true for the 
most isolated and separate nations as for any. We 
ourselves are in the battle and cannot escape it, and 
nothing is left us but to strip to it and go in for the 
completest and best scientific education possible. 

At this point we encounter too a new issue, made 
up for culture itself, that has possibly a greater sig- 
nificance than any mere culture in letters can ever be 
supposed to have. In these applications of science, 
the problem is to inaugurate in fact a new creatorship ; 
and creatorship is a type of advancement that reaches 
far. Hitherto we have been occupied mainly with 



48 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

the promise made of economic benefits. But these 
are only rude beginnings ; better and higher things 
are to come after. What else do we now see in 
some of the facts just referred to, but that we are 
come already to a point where beauty of design, ele- 
gance of form, felicity and grace of composition, are 
more and more distinctly proved to be the sine qua 
non of success ? And here it is that the true creative 
ability is to meet the final test ; a test that is rigidly 
mental, requiring the sharpest and most subtle per- 
ceptions, tastes the most delicate, adjustments in 
the nicest skill and a piercing insight of nature's laws 
and properties, such as no mind, which has not 
somehow come into the eternal beauty, can ever 
hope to attain. And whether this kind of culture is 
not going some time even to exceed the classic refine- 
ment, is certainly no absurd question. The German 
people are a people admitted to be not surpassed in 
the accomplishments of letters and elegant scholar- 
ship ; but there is a clear possibility that their new 
creatorship, begun in the applications of science, will 
sometime bring them to the flower in a more various- 
ly, multifariously creative beauty ; even as God's own 
beauty flowered in the colors, the shapes, the articu- 
lated functions and the wondrously composed inter- 
play of parts in the constitutive order of his work. 
Besides, there is a robustness of quality in this matter 
of creatorship that far exceeds the thin, second-hand 
way of classic imitation. It goes out among things, 
down into their subtleties, up along their heights, and 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 49 

reads them through and through, as by some force of 
personal co-attainment. And then, as it is given to 
man for his highest distinction to be the new creator 
of the world, any people farthest advanced in creator- 
ship will have the highest consciousness and know 
their fit honor as being in the completest form of life. 
Having nature, so to speak, in dominion, they will 
have the genuine exaltation of power ; great sentiments 
too, that are not born of scholarship, and are only the 
better enunciated without classic quotations. And 
yet, being in affinity with all ornament, they will have 
the classics also ; asking for more dead languages, not 
fewer, willing even to go back on the Sanscrit, if they 
may but know more perfectly the timbers and articu- 
lations of their own living tongue. 

We come upon a question thus which is difficult, 
viz., what the schools or colleges of practical science 
are going to do for the training of mind ? 

And here I willingly yield, at the outset, the im- 
mense distinction between equipment and education, 
between the outfit of a worker among causes, and 
the education of a mind for power over mind. Educa- 
tion is confessedly what educes or draws out mind ; 
hence the word. The colleges undertake to do it 
gymnastically ; that is by a training in the ancient 
classics and the pure mathematics ; adding a few 
branches of experimental science just to make a begin- 
ning of general intelligence. Study for study's sake 
is their law, and this kind of education they call lib- 



50 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

eral, I suppose, because the pupil is not haruessed iu it 
to any of life's labors. Having no thought as yet of 
ends or destinations, he is to be separated thus from 
the vulgar prejudices of the shop and the market and 
allowed to have his growth in a way more close to his 
own nature. And so, educated for no particular ends, 
he will be the better educated for all ends. Thus 
only, it is claimed, will the great scholars and elegant 
writers and the men most able to discuss learned 
questions be trained. All the universalized minds 
must have, it is said, this universalizing motherhood. 
No full round man can be educated in particular to 
this or that, and full round men we do amazingly want 
in all the walks of life. 

But granting, as we may, the argument, it does not 
follow that if we propose something short of this we 
propose anything contrary to it. If we seem to pro- 
pose an equipment and not an education, that equip- 
ment will be education, just according to the strain 
of mind-labor it has cost ; and the imagining, think- 
ing, combining power of the man may be drawn out 
even more energetically and effectually, than it would 
be by twice as many years of routine study. What 
gymnast, whether of body or mind, ever wrestles in 
such fierce application, as he that is in throes of labor 
to make out his great invention ? 

After all there is no patent way of making a mind, 
or preparing the out-birth of a great soul's power. It 
will grow by a pine-knot candle as well as by the clas- 
sic lamp of a college. If it cannot be born out of 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 51 

the highest advantages, then it will be out of such as 
it can have. We propose, in fact, a less complete and 
so far inferior course, in the school of practical science, 
because it will carry some really superior effects, be- 
getting more precise ideas of things, giving the man- 
ege of nature's causes more perfectly, and. letting the 
•pupil farther in among them. As the term is to be 
shorter and. more sharply set, we expect to work 
faster, and we have no doubt that a vast number oi 
minds will be sprung for a great and grand history, 
that would otherwise never break fetter at all. It 
would not be strange if some of the very best profes- 
sors of Latin and Greek should be darted forth out of 
these limited studies into just those improved methods 
of study which their own necessities have compelled, 
and for which all these ages have been waiting. We 
can never tell what a soul is going to break into, when 
it is once really started into action. It may even 
break into theology, asking leave of nobody ! 

But there is a way of speaking, on the part of cer- 
tain adhesionists of the college method and the col- 
lege ideas, that does not allow us even the modified 
indulgence here claimed. They speak, oftener than 
we like to hear them, even slightingly or contemptu- 
ously of studies that are for uses, as if these were the 
going after knowledge as a trade or to get a living by 
it. They do not consider how very close upon exactly 
this are the studies of the learned professions. Arc 
they therefore sordid studies ? Or are they culmina- 
tions rather, where the young man, trained by lessons, 



52 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

goes above them or beyond them, to find the uses 
in which their value lies ? Besides, if it is a matter 
in point to make studies look contemptible, what 
is easier than to put the stupidest possible face on 
the college method by just calling it the dumb-bell 
method ? For, what are we told, but that education is 
to make the mind's arms supple before the battle of 
life begins, by training them gymnastically, that is 
by studies for the study's sake, and what is that but 
the dumb-bell method ? 

Now all such arts of derogation are only tricks of 
speech and not arguments. At any rate, I undertake, 
in simple disregard of the first, to make downright 
assertion of the honors of practical science. Which 
in fact is nobler, grander to thought, and more god- 
like, science that beholds a use, or science that is only 
science ? What in fact is the true honor of science 
itself, if it is not in the power it has to multiply good ; 
to create wealth, to arm, and re-endow, and recom- 
pose, and re-create the world, making gods of men ? 
And where has the world made heroes of a nobler 
kind, more bloodless, higher in achievement, con- 
querors in a grander key ? Just the thing, indeed, 
to be admired in practical science, is that it is prac- 
tical. And we want even great institutions endowed 
for it, simply because they will come bringing uses, 
even God's intended uses, when he put things into 
their laws, and laws into things. 

In statements like these it will be seen that, while 
I give in readily to the superior advantages of the old 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 53 

education as related to certain modes of culture, I 
am not afraid to claim for the new certain other 
advantages that, looking only to culture itself, weigh 
heavily in the scale. Let me take my liberty in trac- 
ing a little way some of these comparisons. And if 
I seem to speak one-sidedly, as an advocate, it will 
only be that I am righting up an equilibrium not yet 
adjusted. 

The students of the college method are commonly 
entered at an early age, when they have as yet no 
conception formed of what they are going to be. The 
rich father has declared that his son Hopeful shall 
have the very best education money will buy. And 
then the problem of the college is, — alas ! there is no 
problem in the high mathematics half as difficult, — 
how to give the boy such best education, when he does 
not himself care a fig whether it is good or bad. He 
is here, in fact, just because he could not as well be 
anywhere else. All such are going, of course, into 
prescribed studies, if any ; and then we shall hear it 
as their fine distinction, that they are given to study 
only for the study's sake. Whereas, if they could 
speak for themselves, they would say how often, No, 
not for the study's sake, but for the dogged lesson's 
sake ! These now are the drones of the college, and 
are going to be the graduated dullards and do-nothings 
of the liberal education. College life and society are 
largely infested by these insignificants, and the at- 
mosphere is more or less untoned by them as regards 
everything in the nature of true application. In the 



54 THE NEW EDUCATION. , 

school of applied science there is no place for such. 
If they come into it, as flies into a trap, because ex- 
periment looks more tempting than study, they will 
scarcely dare to light, lest such drill of experiment 
should be the death of them. Young men coming in 
hither will be generally such as come with a meaning, 
and whoever has the grace to mean something is very 
likely to be something ; having always a matter in 
hand to be done, by whatever study, industry, and 
close tension of faculty are needed. 

The college course is oftenest commended, because 
it covers so great length of time, — ten years, at least, 
when the preparatory and subsequent professional 
studies are included, — but the commendation, gen- 
erally good, is, I verily believe, a matter of real dis- 
advantage to many. Short work is commonly sharp 
work, and long work is commonly dull. Kept so long 
out of life too, and trained so nearly in the cloister 
habit, the pupil's living nature is partly extirpated. 
So much study for study's sake, apart from life's 
feeling, and subject to the overweening authority of 
books and teachers, unnerves the will and dries away 
the juices and moist natural sympathies, which are 
often the really best talent a man has, leaving him a 
kind of manikin or lay-figure only of learning. He 
is educated partly out of his wits in being educated 
into them. His education is incubus, making all in- 
spiration, all abandon of action, all fervors of high 
engagement forever after impossible. Certain high, 
strong, masculine natures will bear this half-age of 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 55 

discipline and keep their mettle rising. Certain dry 
souls too, will go through this baking proeess of years, 
without becoming at all more dry. But the less posi- 
tive and freer natures will, how often, be subjugated, 
or even stifled by it. A great many such, it costs 
nothing to believe, would do better trained by a shorter 
process ; better in the pulpit, better at the law ; even as 
some of our old-time Methodist preachers, trained in the 
saddle, saved their natural quantities to substitute 
their education, pouring them out full flood, till by and 
by they had learned gloriously how ; or as lawyers, 
beginning partly with a knack instead of a brief, go 
in to gain their causes by being causes themselves. In 
these scantier methods, the souls untrammeled take 
inspirations more easily, and are moved all the more 
nimbly and naturally that they qualify as experts, 
and not by indoctrination. And if they seem, for a 
time, to be too little polished by letters, they will com- 
monly be polished afterwards by the rub of their en- 
gagements, and will learn, as Bunyan did, the uses of 
words by seeking words for their uses. They will, 
probably, have as much more impetus too, as they are 
educated closer to life's feeling and the concerns of 
the hour. 

It was formerly a large defect in the academic 
method, and I fear it may be now, that it gave so 
little attention to the training of the senses and the 
sense-perceptions. It kept the pupil wholly at the 
book lesson-drill to give him the handle of his 
mind, and left him too often a good deal less able than 



56 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

he should be to handle his hands. He has no practised 
eye. All his faculties worldward work confusedly 
still, as if they had nothing to do with his mind. 
Trained to no dashing out in chalk of plants, animals, 
organs, rock-formations and the like, he has no close 
observation of anything. He acquires dexterity and 
precision of motion from no closely exact adjustments 
of cameras and microscopes, and from no critically 
nice manipulations in chemistry, such as will save his 
experiments and his clothes. He probably writes a 
bad hand, and graduates a clumsy fumbler, left-handed 
in both hands, and scarcely more dexterous in his 
head ; for no matter how good a scholar one may be 
in the classics, or the mathematics, if still he has no 
proper sense of colors, lines, and shapes, and no pre- 
cise art of handling, or of touch, he will just so far be 
wanting in a genuine mental eye ; and the fault will 
come out somewhere, in his law-point, or his deed of 
amputation, or it may be in his sermons. 

Again, it will be found that the teaching of science 
in mere class-lessons, apart from experiment by the 
pupil, where that is possible, and apart from all uses 
of application, is the very worst method as respects 
the distinctness and real intelligence of the impress- 
ions given. The pure mathematics can be taught in 
that manner ; for these, if learned at all, can only be 
accurately thought ; but the science of things must be 
gotten out of things themselves ; that is, by asking 
what they are for, what they are doing or will do ? 
Besides, there is a large class of pupils whose nature 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 57 

it is to be looking always most keenly after the uses 
of things, and who can only drop into utter listlessncss 
and disappointment when put to the learning of them 
by routine lessons. Pupils of a different habit might 
take to such abstractive lessons more naturally, and 
might get a certain kind of knowledge by rote, but the 
more inquisitive practical sort will get distinctly noth- 
ing. In the beautiful science of chemistry, for exam- 
ple, illustrated by the most fascinatingly brilliant ex- 
periments, and quickening to thought as to the solid 
matter of the world itself, it is even mournful to see, 
from the answers of the college examinations, how 
little science mere spectatorship has taught. Muddle, 
— muddle only ! No insight of ideas and laws, no 
science at all ! Even bright, high-working minds get, 
how often, nothing but the lingo of it for diverting uses 
in the college yard. Science that it is of the mind 
under foot, most potentializing of all sciences in the 
causes it reveals, showing the atoms leaping to their 
laws and rushing as in fiery fervors of intelligence 
after their mates, how commonly is nothing gotten 
from it still for the mind's endowment ! I speak the 
more properly thus, and with the better right, that my 
own experience in the matter testifies only of the 
truest personal advantage. For it happened that, Avith 
two or three others in a large class, I was taken by 
the science enough to get hold of the keys, and it has 
been with me ever since, meeting me at almost every 
turn, bringing new refreshments of example and dear 
suggestion, and pouring in more copious riches on me 



58 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

than all the other more gymnastic studies of my 
course together. Indeed, I seem to have had these 
imponderable entities, these atomic yearnings, these 
inorganic half mystical forces keeping me company, 
and to have gone along, as it were, socially among 
them, where some other of my friends, better educated 
and more gifted, have been seeming only to see, but 
to get no sign. Most sad loss do they make who have 
gotten what they call the liberal accomplishments of 
classic study and missed the magic, world-transform- 
ing wealth of this one study. 

They need not miss obtaining a very good knowl- 
edge of the science in the college course, and yet how 
commonly will they, when it is taught by no labora- 
tory practice, and no manipulations of experiment 
conducted by themselves. Here their mind would be 
set to more than holding their eyes for a lecture, more 
than passing in a lesson, — to the harnessing of a 
power, and the discovering of things by their laws 
accurately enough to know what they will do, or what 
can be done with them and by them. And this girds 
them in so closely that their faculty is put in stress 
for exact comprehension, and their mental education, 
if we speak of that, is most solidly, soberly advanced ; 
and the matters learned do not now go into mind to be 
lodged there as dead quantities that, being learned, 
are there entombed and done with, but as forces of 
onward impulsion and expectant vigor. It will be as 
if the steam power, the electric celerity, the fierce 
oxygen, the iron, were putting their strong nature into 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 59 

the boy or the man, to be endowment and momentum 
for his works and character. 

As in chemistry, so in mining, mineralogy, geology, 
engine-building, engineering, — these and all other 
sciences, between astronomy on one side and entomol- 
ogy on the other, will be studied best, most effectually 
felt out and sounded, in their uses and applications. 
They will not be shammed in this manner, and the 
students, going after them with appetite, will not have 
their minds debauched in them. And it will be a 
considerable advantage too, afterward, when they go 
out into life, that having been thus practically trained, 
they will not be laughed at as incapable s of learning, 
but will be accepted as the true Magistri Artium, in the 
original and living sense of the degree. 

And now, having spoken thus freely of points where 
the old education has its disadvantages, and the new 
its better advantages, will it be imagined or inferred 
by some that I am willing to take down the honors 
thus of the fuller, more protracted, and, in some 
possible respects, more fertilizing courses of the col- 
leges heretofore in use ? Far be it. I accept no such 
construction as that. I can think of it only as absurd. 
No, a true classic culture can never be antiquated, and 
if I seem to raise a crusade for the shorter methods 
of applied science, I do it in the clear understanding 
that such shorter methods are wanted, and that I am 
doing nothing against, but everything for the advance- 
ment of the old methods. For if we push the new 
education to its utmost efficiency, and far enough to 



60 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

practically fill the whole tier of life for which it is 
organized, making every walk of industry and enter- 
prise, every farm-house, factory, mine, trade, road, 
every shop of handicraft, every humblest toil, even 
down to the knife-grinder's lathe and fisherman's bar- 
row, to feel its quickening touch of intelligence, the 
classic culture will only be as much more largely 
sought, and its courses as much more frequented, as 
the general underlift of mind is higher than it was 
before. And then as now, and now as then, Mater 
Alma esto perpetua. 

But misgivings will be felt as regards still another 
department of life ; viz., that of morals and religion. 

And first of all, many alarmists will apprehend the 
incoming here of a new age of materialism. What, 
in fact, are we preparing here, they will ask, but to 
have the new age educated into materialism as com- 
pletely as possible ? As if the getting a science of 
matter were a coming under matter, and not the 
getting up of matter into mind, where it shall reveal 
its ideas and laws and prove itself a thought-born 
creature. True, there is a certain looking here, in 
these proposed studies, to matter, and that with more 
or less expectation. But if living in such expectation 
is the same thing as being materialized, it ought to 
have been fatally done a long time ago. What is mat- 
ter for but to be used in ways of advantage ? Do we 
not live in it ? Are we not fastened to it as we are 
to our bodies, nay to our heads and faces ? And what 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 61 

has poor, pious agriculture been looking to, and dig- 
ging in, from the first day till now ? And what is 
land itself, — the vast land-wealth, outmcasuring all 
other properties together, — but a property in matter ? 
What, in short, by the sentence of nature, do we use, 
occupy, wear, spend our life in, get our nutriment 
from, and bow down ourselves upon, but the matter- 
•world we are put here to inhabit ? Nay, we are here 
in matter too, for religion's sake ; only never to be 
materialized by it, till we are buried and dissolved 
in it. 

See again, distinctly, what high furniture of mind 
and spirit is coming up out of these material things. 
For what are words in their first stage, but names of 
material images, whether acts or objects, that meet 
us in the senses ? Dropping thus our very thoughts 
into matter to be named, are we not going to be 
fatally sunk in it ? So it would seem. No ! for look 
again, and we shall see that the matter-born words 
have all a second sense related to mind, a power of 
expression by figure that makes them God-given sym- 
bols of thought and spirit and all the invisible things 
of invisible worlds. So forthwith we shoot them up 
into a higher tier of meanings for all mind-work, all 
truth and religion. The underpinning thus of the 
general fabric of words is matter, but it culminates 
airily in pinnacles of meaning that are the more 
grandly spiritual for the solid sense-work under them. 

And what, again, do we now see as science advances, 
but that, as our single words were significant origi- 



62 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

nally, because the stamps of God's intelligence were 
in their faces, so they are now going to be threaded 
and strung in the unity of reason, as the things them- 
selves are threaded and strung by the laws going 
through them. Thus it would almost make up, even 
now, a new dictionary, to simply gather up the law- 
words of science that are getting a higher second 
sense as words of thought and spirit, drawn towards 
unity by the analogies of their own system ; gravita- 
tion, for example, orbit, focus, centripetal and centri- 
fugal, apogee and perigee, reflection and refraction, 
magnetic, electric, photographic, telegraphic, conduc- 
tion, bipolar affinity, latent heat, static equilibrium, 
system, order, kosmos and a full thousand others used 
for the expression of supernatural ideas. Thus we 
speak of the bipolarities of subjects ; or of the neu- 
tral salts of feeling, quiet as nitre till the fires of 
provocation touch them ; or of geologic layers in civ- 
ilization ; or of souls that are exogenous or endoge- 
nous in their growth, blooming only in their own 
order. Now by all such words of law we are unify- 
ing more or less perceptibly the ideas and thoughts of 
mind they are used to express, approximating always 
that complete whole of intelligence in which they will 
be configured to, and accurately tempered by, each 
other. And what forbids that we thus form, at last, 
by the simple growth of language itself, untrammeled 
by logic and speculative art, a complete mind-system, 
answering to the system discovered in things ? Is this 
the materializing of man, or is it rather the spiritual- 
izing of the world ? 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 63 

Dismissing this, we pass on to another objection, 
viz., that in making so much of things and their 
scientific uses, we shall fall into a remorseless and 
dry rationalism, and even lose out the faculty of im- 
agination itself. We shall educate ourselves out of 
poetry, out of all finest capacities of literature, and 
even out of religion. Xo, the matters of science are 
no dry bodiment of fact and speculative reason, such 
as the objection supposes. There is, in fact, no school- 
ing for the imagination at all comparable, as regards 
richness and stimulating efficacy, save in religion it- 
self. I once heard a commencement orator dealing 
heavy blows on the stupid and stupefying nurture 
given to children in books of natural history, and 
saying, in what seemed to him a brilliant sally : 
"Teach your children fairies rather, hobgoblins, sprites, 
good-fellows, put them in the Arabian Nights and 
bring them up no more among the beasts." That he 
thought would raise the true poetry in them, and pre- 
pare them even to believe in miracles ! Whereas, if 
I am right, there is a far higher wonder-working and 
a sweeter magic in the spells of the life-power, grow- 
ing matter into beasts and trees, and birds and 
flowers, out of germs so little like them, than in all 
the pretty nonsense of such fables ; and that with 
the advantage that these more than romantic wonders 
are yet literally true. There is, in fact, more poetry 
and more to quicken the imagination, more mystery 
and rhythm and soul-quickening inspiration in the 
magic feats of organic chemistry, imposing its own 



64 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

will on matter, as no human chemist can, — more, I 
say, in this one department o£ science, than in all the 
books of Homer together. There is no hymn for all 
the gods that has the music of this. And so it is just 
now beginning to appear in our later poets, that the 
deepest thoughts and freshest beauty and grandest 
inspiration of song are contributions, at bottom, from 
the revelations of science. And if it be science to 
think the thoughts of God and set them chiming in 
productive work, what else should be the result ? 

But we are proposing here to give a much larger 
place to science, relatively speaking, in the education 
of the coming age ; and what is this, as things are 
looking now, some will ask, but to put the coining 
age at school in ways of unbelief ? It is much to be 
regretted, certainly, if science is making issue with 
religion more frequently than it was ; but for one, I 
have no least concern for the result. If there is no 
truth in religion, it must die of course, and may as 
well die soon. If there is truth in it, there is most 
assuredly no other truth in conflict with it. Besides, 
if there is any possibility of science in things, there 
is, by supposition, mind in things ; for science is but 
intelligence discovering intelligence, mind rethinking 
the thoughts of mind everywhere present. To be 
thinkable they must have ends, uses, adaptations, 
geometries in their masses, arithmetic in their atoms, 
proportions, orbits, laws, otherwise they are but chro- 
nonJiotonthologos, and there is no science of that. But 
since they are threaded with mentality all through, 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 65 

and science is but finding tlie threads, since ilicy arc 
covered all over with stamps of intelligence, which 
means divine intelligence or nothing, it may as well 
be expected that the tides of the sea, swept out with 
a broom, will not return, as that religion will not, when 
thrust away by science. Let there be no feeble depre- 
cation then of conflict or collision between science 
and religion, such as we sometimes hear on both 
sides. The braver way is better and more rational. 
No, let come what must : as long as there is matter of 
conflict, let conflict be : let the two grapple in the 
close interlock and wrestle together ; and let the two 
get just what belongs to them as the battle edge 
divides to each. 

Meantime I take a most particular pleasure in the 
advocacy of a way of education specially devoted to 
the applications of science, because of the conviction I 
feel, that our schools of application will be the best 
and most certain rectifiers possible of the unbelieving 
tendencies of science itself. The real fact is that our 
unbelievers and deniers in science prove their infirmity 
sometimes in the loss of their equilibrium. They are 
dazzled by their own splendors, just about to be, if not 
already, won. So much authority so long deferred 
to oversets the balance of their brain : and they think 
they can settle anything by their pronouncement, as 
other tyrants do, who have outgrown their measures ; 
pitching in their authority thus on the great religious 
questions of ontology, soul-force, immateriality of 
spirit, freedom of the will, and the like, where theolo- 
5 



66 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

gians and metaphysicians have been toiling thousands 
of years ; having no suspicion that they are become 
theologians and metaphysicians themselves, without 
even knowing the alphabet of the subjects. They get 
lifted also into moods of flightiness by their premature 
soaring on the wings of hypothesis, or the unripe 
guesses they propound as facts. As they multiply in 
numbers, they become hurried by their races with each 
other, thrusting out hypotheses that are occurrent, not 
established. In their zeal for precedence they quite 
forestall the honors it brings, setting up their flag on 
islands a little before they are discovered. Living 
thus in a kind of fire-work element, where opinions, 
conjectures, guesses, and brilliant hypotheses are 
bursting into flame all around the sky, the premature 
births of their discovery make more noise than the 
full-born truths. 

Saying nothing, in this view, of the shallow sensa- 
tion-mongers who are bolting out their discoveries } T et 
unborn^ and storming them in our faces just because 
they shake the faith of religion, let it waken no sur- 
prise if I say that of all the fifty or more points, where 
science is supposed to be most distinctly pitted against 
religion, I know not one where the matter advanced 
has come to be any matter of science at all, excepting 
only two or three where the constructions of religion 
have been easily accommodated already to the ad- 
mitted discoveries. And it is exactly here, in this 
corrective sobering of hypotheses, that applied science, 
largely endeavored in our schools, will be adding just 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 67 

the counterweights demanded. Applied science must 
be science, for anything in the nature of hypothesis, 
not verified by discovery, is but chaff as regards ap- 
plications and uses. There is no romancing or vapor- 
ing here. Conjectures, unripe guesses, cannot turn a 
mill, or color a flower, or kindle auroral fires about 
the point of a magnet. Hydraulics for the imagina- 
tion will not answer for water. Geologic theories, if 
that is all, will do no good work in the mines. Assays 
that are going to roast gold out of gunpowder will 
probably get something else. Not even clairvoyant 
revelations will be as good as telegraphic cables. All 
teaching here is held within the sober limits of dis- 
covery. What instruction is going to apply it must 
first solidly know, and the study of the pupil will be 
to find what is, not what possibly can be. The whole 
training here is practically bent, and the habit created 
is a habit of respect to what is practically established. 
And from that kind of habit, in the forward operative 
men of the future age, religion will have nothing to 
fear. Or if it be said that such limited courses of 
study, in the schools of applied science, will have a 
peril of their own, gendering a conceit the more mis- 
chievous because of its limitations ; if we are reminded 
that a " little knowledge is a dangerous thing ; " it is 
enough to reply that a great deal of knowledge which 
is not come to knowledge is a great deal more dan- 
gerous. A grand practical sobriety will get footing in 
this manner, and when it comes to rule in all the great 
affairs of industry and creative production, it will have 



68 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

weight and body enough to sober the over-zealous 
nights of the discoverers. Assuming to be more sci- 
entific, they will begin to think they are less so ; and 
it will be strange, if the men of applied science do 
not often equal them in the matter of discovery itself. 
For what can better prepare discovery than a fixed 
respect to facts, and a stringent attention to their 
uses ? On this ground we are even to expect, not 
better inventions only and uses, but a more vigorous 
growth in science itself. And withal it will add as 
much vigor to religion as it does to common life and 
science. 

On the whole, I know not anything in this training 
of practical science that can well discourage faith in 
its moral and religious tendencies, unless it be, where 
that is true, that it proposes no moral supervision of 
the pupils, and no religious observances. And what, 
in this view, can afford a better compensation, or 
more effectually meet a most real want of the age 
itself, than to have a professorship added on the ap- 
plications of science to religion ? It must be filled by 
a man capable of such high themes, and why not have 
him lecture on them every Sunday, connecting with 
his lecture some fit observance of worship, and a free 
questioning or debate of all the students and profes- 
sors on all the questions put in issue ? What is the 
world now waiting for, but just this scientific confi- 
dence in religion, and this always truth-confirming, 
liquidating power ? 

I have only to add now, in closing, a few words 



THE NEW EDUCATION. 69 

concerning the advantages added to character, in its 
most ennobled forms, by the proposed training in 
practical science. The very thing studied is to bring- 
all nature under power, and by that means to double, 
or quadruple, or even to twenty fold the quantity of 
being in the men. Hitherto we have had small men 
living in small character, partly because they have 
had no grand dominion of property in the world, such 
as belongs to them. But when they get all causes 
under, they will have a towering property in their 
functions, and may have a like towering stature in 
their virtues. For it happens that what is thus a 
training into power is a training also into order, the 
order of law and of things in law. Order is next thing 
to principle ; and scientific order, by a hidden law of 
sympathy, favors all virtue : character, in fact, is only 
order in mind. And again, order in mind will link 
itself with a perpetual assent to law, breeding rever- 
ence to all most fixed convictions of right, even as to 
the fixed laws applied by science itself. The classics 
are controvertible and variable in whatever stamp is 
gotten from them, because they are human ; and we 
may therefore well enough admit that a classical 
training can work finer tastes and finishes, a little 
way off from the severities of principle, producing a 
freer abandon and a more gracefully captivating, alto- 
gether human play ; but for just that reason they can 
never endow a true great soul in the noblest quanti- 
ties of power, and the inflexible majesty of right. 
Only science and the scientific order can set merit 



70 THE NEW EDUCATION. 

first, and make ornament the garnish of merit ; only 
these can truly enthrone the sober laws of use, turning 
politics into statesmanship, ruling out cabal and fac- 
tion, rebuilding society thus in terms of order and 
truth, sanctified by justice and crowned by religion. 
This, if I am right, is character ; and having thus all 
works and workmen headed by the supervision of 
character, a new great age of character only can re- 
sult ; a consummation that may fitly gladden the 
expectant eyes of all good men. 



III. 

COMMON SCHOOLS.* 



Lev. 24- 22. Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the 
stranger, as for one of your own country : for I am the Lord 
your God. 

It is my very uncommon privilege and pleasure to 
speak to you, for once, from a text already fulfilled, 
and more than fulfilled, in the observance. For we, 
as a people or nation, have not only abstained from 
passing laws that are unequal, or hard upon strangers, 
which is what the rule of the text forbids, but we 
have invited them to become fellow-citizens with us 
in our privileges, and bestowed upon them all the 
rights and immunities of citizens. We have said to 
the strangers from Germany, France, Switzerland, 
Norway, Ireland, and indeed of every land : " Come 
and be Americans with us, you and your children ; 
and whatsoever right or benefit we have, in our free 
institutions and our vast and fertile domain, shall be 
yours." 

Thus invited, thus admitted to an equal footing 

* Delivered in the North Church, Hartford, as a Fast Day Dis 
course, March 25, 1853. 



72 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

with us, they are not content, but are just now return- 
ing our generosity by insisting that we must excuse 
them and their children from being wholly and 
properly American. They will not have one law for 
us and for themselves, but they demand immunities 
that are peculiar to themselves, and before unheard 
of by us ; or else that we wholly give up institutions 
for their sake that are the dearest privileges of our 
birthright. They accept the common rights of the 
law, the common powers of voting, the common terms 
of property, a common privilege in the new lands and 
the mines of gold, but when they come to the matter 
of common schools, they will not be common with us 
there ; they require of us, instead, either to give up 
our common schools, or else, which in fact amounts 
to the same thing, to hand over their proportion of 
the public money and let them use it for such kind 
of schools, as they happen to like best ; ecclesiastical 
schools, whether German, French, or Irish ; any kind 
of schools but such as are American and will make 
Americans of their children. 

It has been clear for some years past, from the 
demonstrations of our Catholic clergy and their peo- 
ple, but particularly of the clergy, that they were 
preparing for an assault upon the common school 
system, hitherto in so great favor with our country- 
men ; complaining, first, of the Bible as a sectarian 
book in the schools, and then, as their complaints 
have begun to be accommodated by modifications that 
amount to a discontinuance, more or less complete, of 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 73 

religious instruction itself, of our " godless scheme of 
education ; " to which (as godless only as they have 
required it to be,) they say they cannot surrender 
their children without a virtual sacrifice of all relig- 
ion. Growing more hopeful of their ability, by the 
heavy vote they can wield, to turn the scale of an 
election one way or the other between opposing par- 
ties, and counting on the sway they can thus exert 
over the popular leaders and candidates, they have 
lately attempted a revolution of the school system of 
Michigan, and are now memorializing the legislatures 
of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and urging it on the peo- 
ple of these States to allow a change or modification 
of theirs that amounts to a real discontinuance ; viz., 
to make a distribution of the public school money to 
all existing schools, of whatever description, accord- 
ing to the number of their scholars ; and the moment 
this is done, plainly nothing will be left of the com- 
mon school system but a common fund, gathered by 
a common tax on property, to support private schools. 
Evidently the time has now come, and the issue of 
life or death to common schools is joined for trial. 
The ground is taken, the flag is raised, and there is to 
be no cessation till the question is forever decided 
whether we are to have common schools in our coun- 
try or not. And accordingly, it is time for us all, 
citizens, public men, and Christians, to be finding the 
ground on which we expect and may be able to stand. 
In one view the question is wholly a religious ques- 
tion ; in another it is more immediatelv a civil or 



74 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

political question. And yet the lines cross each other 
in so many ways that any proper discussion of the 
topic must cover both aspects or departments, the 
religious and the political. I take up the question at 
this early period, before it has become, in any sense, 
a party question, that I may have the advantage of 
greater freedom, and that I may suffer no imputation 
of a party bias to detain me from saying anything 
which pertains to a complete view of the subject. 

As this day of fasting is itself a civil appointment, 
I have always made it a point to occupy the day, in 
part, with some subject that pertains to the public 
duties and religious concerns of the State or nation. 
I propose, therefore, now to anticipate, as it were, the 
pressure of this great subject, and discharge myself, 
once for all, of my whole duty concerning it ; and I 
hope to speak of it under that sense of responsibility, 
as well as in that freedom from prejudice, which one 
of the greatest and most serious of all American sub- 
jects requires. I wish I might also speak in a manner 
to exclude any narrow and partial or sectarian views 
of it, such as time and the further consideration of 
years might induce a wish to qualify or amend. 

I will now undertake to say that our Catholic friends 
have, in no case, any just reason for uneasiness or 
complaint. A great many persons and even com- 
munities will very naturally act, for a time, as power 
is able to act, and will rather take counsel of their 
prejudices than of reason, or of the great principles 
that underlie our American institutions. Considera- 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 75 

tion, as a rectifying power, is often tardy in its com- 
ing, and of course there will be something unrati- 
fied, for so long a time, in the matter that waits for 
its arrival. 

Meantime the subject itself is one of some inherent 
difficulty, and cannot be expected to settle itself upon 
its right foundation, without some delay or some agi- 
tation, more or less protracted, of its opposing inter- 
ests and reasons. We began our history in all but 
the single colony of Baltimore, as Protestant com- 
munities ; and in those especially of New England, 
we have had the common school as a fundamental 
institution from the first, — in our view a Protestant 
institution, — associated with all our religious con- 
victions, opinions, and the public sentiment of our 
Protestant society. We are still, as Americans, a 
Protestant people, and many are entirely ignorant as 
yet of the fact that we are not still Protestant States 
also, as at the first ; Protestant, that is, in our civil 
order and the political fabric of our government. And 
yet we very plainly are not. We have made a great 
transition ; made it silently and imperceptibly, and 
scarcely know as yet that it is made. Occupied 
wholly with a historic view of the case, considering 
how the country and its institutions are historically 
speaking ours ; the liberality and kindness we have 
shown to those who have come more recently to join 
us, and are even now heard speaking in a foreign 
accent among us ; the asylum we have generously 
opened for them and their children : the immense 



76 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

political trust we have committed to them, in setting 
them on a common footing, as voters, with ourselves ; 
and that now we offer to give a free education to their 
children, at the public expense, or by a tax on all the 
property of the state, — considering all this, and that 
we and our fathers are Protestants, it seems to be 
quite natural and right, or even a matter of course, 
that our common schools should remain Protestant 
and retain their ancient footing undisturbed. 

But we shall find, on a second consideration, that 
we have really agreed for something different, and 
that now we have none to complain of but ourselves, 
if we have engaged for more than it is altogether 
pleasant to yield. Our engagement, in the large view 
of it, is to make the state or political order a plat- 
form of equal right to all sects and denominations of 
Christians. We have slid off, imperceptibly, from the 
old Puritan, upon an American basis, and have under- 
taken to inaugurate a form of political order that 
holds no formal church connection. The properly 
Puritan common school is already quite gone by ; the 
intermixture of Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians, Epis- 
copalians, and diverse other names of Christians 
called Protestants, has burst the capsule of Puritan- 
ism, and as far as the schools are concerned it is 
quite passed away ; even the Westminster catechism is 
gone by, to be taught in the schools no more. In 
precisely the same manner, have we undertaken also 
to loosen the bonds of Protestantism in the schools, 
when the time demanding it arrives. To this we are 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 77 

mortgaged by our greal American doctrine itself, and 
there is no way to escape the obligation but to renounce 
the doctrine, and resume, if we can, the forms and 
lost prerogatives of a state religion. 

But there is one thing, and a very great thing, that 
we have not lost, nor agreed to yield; viz., Common 
Schools. Here we may take our stand, and upon this 
we may insist as being a great American institution ; 
one that has its beginnings with our history itself ; 
one that is inseparably joined to the fortunes of the 
republic ; and one that can never wax old, or be dis- 
continued in its rights and reasons, till the pillars of 
the state are themselves cloven down forever. We 
cannot have Puritan common schools ; these are gone 
already. We cannot have Protestant common schools, 
or those which are distinctively so. But we can have 
common schools, and these we must agree to have 
and maintain till the last or latest day of our liber- 
ties. These are American, as our liberties themselves 
are American ; and whoever requires of us, whether 
directly or by implication, to give them up, requires 
what is more than our bond promises, and what is, in 
fact, a real affront to our name and birthright as a 
people. 

I mean, of course, by common schools, when I thus 
speak, schools for the children of all classes, sects, 
and denominations of the people ; so far perfected in 
their range of culture and mental and moral disci- 
pline, that it shall be the interest of all to attend, as 
being the best schools which can be found ; clear too 



78 COMMON SCHOOLS, 

of any such objections as may furnish a just ground 
of offense to the conscience or the religious scruples 
of any Christian body of our people. 1 mean, too, 
schools that are established by the public law of the 
state, supported at the public expense, organized and 
superintended by public authority. Of course it is 
implied that the schools shall be under laws that are 
general, in the same way as the laws of roads, records, 
and military service ; that no distribution shall be 
made, in a way of exception, to schools that are pri- 
vate, ecclesiastical or parochial ; that whatever ac- 
commodations are made to different forms of religion, 
shall be so made as to be equally available to all ; that 
the right of separate religious instruction, the super- 
vision, the choice of teachers, the selection of books, 
shall be provided for under fixed conditions, and so as 
to maintain the fixed rule of majorities, in all ques- 
tions left for the decision of districts. The schools, 
in other words, shall be common, in just the same 
sense that all the laws are common, so that the ex- 
perience of families and of children under them shall 
be an experience of the great republican rule of 
majorities ; an exercise for majorities of obedience to 
fixed statutes, and of moderation and impartial re- 
spect to the rights and feelings of minorities ; an 
exercise for minorities of patience and of loyal as- 
sent to the will of majorities ; a schooling, in that 
manner, which begins at the earliest moment possible, 
in the rules of American law and the duties of an 
American citizen. 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 79 

And this, 1 undertake to say, is the institution 
which we are not for any reason to surrender, but to 

hold fast as being a necessary and Fixed element of 
the public order, one without which our American 
laws and liberties are scarcely American longer; or, 
if we call them by that name, have no ground longer 
of security and consolidated public unity. 

In the first place, it will be found, if we closely in- 
spect our institutions, that the common school is, in 
fact, an integral part of the civil order. It is no 
eleemosynary institution, erected outside of the state, 
but is itself a part of the public law, as truly so as 
the legislatures and judicial courts. The school- 
houses are a public property, the district committees 
are civil officers, the teachers are as truly function- 
aries of the law as the constables, prison-keepers, in- 
spectors, and coroners. We perceive then, if we 
understand the question rightly, that an application 
against common schools, is so far an application for 
the dismemberment and reorganization of the civil 
order of the state. Certain religionists appear, in 
the name of religion, demanding that the state shall 
be otherwise constructed. Or if it be said that they 
do not ask for the discontinuance of the common 
schools, but only to have a part of the funds bestowed 
upon their ecclesiastical schools, the case is not mended 
but rather made worse by the qualification ; for in 
that view they are asking that a part of the funds 
which belong to the civil organization shall be paid 



80 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

over to their religion, or to the imperium in imperio 
which their religion so far substitutes for the civil order. 
It is as if they were to ask that the health-wardens 
should so far be substituted bj their church-wardens, 
or the coroner's inquest by their confessional, and 
that the state, acknowledging their right to the sub- 
stitution demanded, should fee the church-wardens 
and confessors in their behalf. If an application that 
infringes on the civil polity of our States, in a man- 
ner so odious, is to be heard, the civil order may as 
well be disbanded, and the people given over to their 
ecclesiastics, to be ruled by them in as many clans of 
religion as they see fit to make. Are we ready, as 
Americans, to yield our institutions up in this man- 
ner, or to make them paymasters to a sect who will 
so far dismember their integrity ? 

This great institution too, of common schools, is 
not only a part of the state, but is imperiously wanted 
as such, for the common training of so many classes 
and conditions of people. There needs to be some 
place where, in early childhood, they may be brought 
together and made acquainted with each other ; thus 
to wear away the sense of distance, otherwise certain 
to become an established animosity of orders ; to 
form friendships ; to be exercised together on a com- 
mon footing of ingenuous rivalry ; the children of the 
rich to feel the power and do honor to the struggles 
of merit in the lowly, when it rises above them ; the 
children of the poor to learn the force of merit and 
feel the benign encouragement yielded by its blame- 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 81 

Less victories. Indeed, no child can be said to be well 
trained, especially no male child, who has not met the 
people as they are, above him or below, in the seat- 
ings, plays, and studies of the common school. With- 
out this he can never be a fully qualified citizen, or 
prepared to act his part wisely as a citizen. Confined 
to a select school, where only the children of wealth 
and distinction are gathered, he will not know 
the merit there is in the real virtues of the poor, 
or the power that slumbers in their talent. He 
will take his better dress as a token of his better 
quality, look down upon the children of the lowly 
with an educated contempt, prepare to take on lofty 
airs of confidence and presumption afterward ; finally, 
to make the discovery when it is too late, that poverty 
has been the sturdy nurse of talent in some unhonored 
youth who comes up to affront him by an equal, or 
mortify and crush him by an overmastering, force. So 
also the children of the poor and lowly, if they should 
be privately educated in some inferior degree by the 
honest and faithful exertion of their parents ; secreted, 
as it were, in some back alley or obscure corner of the 
town, will either grow up in a fierce, inbred hatred of 
the wealthier classes, or else in a mind cowed by 
undue modesty, as being of another and inferior 
quality, unable therefore to fight the great battle of 
life hopefully, and counting it a kind of presumption 
to think that they can force their way upward, even by 
merit itself. 

Without common schools, the disadvantage falls 
6 



82 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

both ways in about equal degrees, and the disadvan 
tage that accrues to the state, in the loss of so much 
character and so many cross ties of mutual respect 
and generous appreciation, the embittering so fatally 
of all outward distinctions, and the propagation of so 
many misunderstandings, righted only by the immense 
public mischiefs that follow 7 , — this, I say, is greater 
even than the disadvantages accruing to the classes 
themselves ; a disadvantage that weakens immensely 
the security of the state and even of its liberties. 
Indeed, I seriously doubt whether any system of popu- 
lar government can stand the shock, for any length 
of time, of that fierce animosity that is certain to be 
gendered where the children are trained up wholly in 
their classes, and never brought together to feel, un- 
derstand, appreciate, and respect each other, on the 
common footing of merit and of native talent, in a 
common school. Falling back thus on the test of 
merit and of native force, at an early period of life, 
moderates immensely their valuation of mere conven- 
tionalities and of the accidents of fortune, and puts them 
in a way of deference that is genuine as well as neces- 
sary to their common peace in the state. Common 
schools are nurseries thus of a free republic ; private 
schools, of factions, cabals, agrarian laws, and contests 
of force. Therefore, I say, we must have common 
schools ; they are American, indispensable to our 
American institutions, and must not be yielded for 
any consideration smaller than the price of our liber- 
ties. 






COMMON SCHOOLS. 83 

Nor is it only in this manner that they are seen i<> 
be necessary. The same argument holds, with even 
greater force, when applied to the religious distinct- 
ions of our country. It is very plain that we cannot 
have common schools for the purposes above named, 
if we make distributions, whether of schools or of 
funds, under sectarian or ecclesiastical distinctions. 
At that moment the charm and very much of the 
reality of common schools vanish. Besides, the eccle- 
siastical distinctions are themselves distinctions also 
of classes, in another form, and such too as are much 
more dangerous than any distinctions of wealth. Let 
the Catholic children, for example, be driven out of 
our schools by unjust trespasses on their religion, or 
be withdrawn for mere pretexts that have no founda- 
tion, and just there commences a training in religious 
antipathies bitter as the grave. Never brought close 
enough to know each other, the children, subject to 
the great well-known principle that whatever is un- 
known is magnified by the darkness it is under, have 
all their prejudices and repugnances magnified a thou- 
sand fold. They grow up in the conviction that there 
is nothing but evil in each other, and close to that lies 
the inference that they are right in doing what evil to 
each other they please. I complain not of the fact 
that they are not assimilated, but of what is far more 
dishonest and wicked, that they are not allowed to 
understand each other. They are brought up, in fact, 
for misunderstanding ; separated that they may misun- 
derstand each other ; kept apart, walled up to heaven 



84 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

in the inclosures of their sects, that they may be as 
ignorant of each other, as inimical, as incapable of 
love and cordial good citizenship as possible. The 
arrangement is not only unchristian, but it is thor- 
oughly un-American, hostile at every point to our 
institutions themselves. Xo bitterness is so bitter, no 
seed of faction so rank, no division so irreconcilable, 
as that which grows out of religious distinctions 
sharpened to religious animosities, and softened by no 
terms of intercourse ; the more bitter when it begins 
with childhood ; and yet more bitter when it is exas- 
perated also by distinctions of property and social life 
that correspond ; and yet more bitter still, when it is 
aggravated also by distinctions of stock or nation. 

In this latter view, the withdrawing of our Catholic 
children from the common schools, unless for some 
real breach upon their religion, and the distribution 
demanded of public moneys to them in schools apart 
by themselves, is a bitter cruelty to the children and 
a very unjust affront to our institutions. We bid 
them welcome as they come, and open to their free 
possession all the rights of our American citizenship. 
They, in return, forbid their children to be Americans, 
pen them as foreigners to keep them so, and train 
them up in the speech of Ashdod among us. And 
then, to complete the affront, they come to our legis- 
latures demanding it as their right to share in funds 
collected by a taxing of the whole people, and to have 
these funds applied to the purpose of keeping their 
children from being Americans. 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 85 

Our only answer to such demands is : " No ! take 
your place with us in our common schools, and con- 
sent to be Americans, or else go back to Turkey, 
where Mohammedans, Greeks, Armenians, Jews are 
walled up by the laws themselves, forbidding them 
ever to pass over or to change their superstitions ; 
there to take your chances of liberty, such as a people 
are capable of when they are trained up, as regards 
each other, to be foreigners for all coming time in 
blood and religion." I said, go back to Turkey : that 
is unnecessary. If we do not soon prepare a state of 
Turkish order and felicity here, by separating and 
folding our children thus, in the stringent limits of 
religious non-acquaintance and consequent animosity, 
it will be because the laws of human nature and soci- 
ety have failed. 

Besides, there are other consequences of such a 
breach upon the common school system, implied in 
yielding this demand, which are not to be suffered. 
A very great part of the children, thus educated, will 
have very inferior advantages. They will be shut up 
in schools that do not teach them what, as Americans, 
they most of all need to know, the political geography 
and political history of the world, the rights of human- 
ity, the struggles by which those rights are vindicated 
and the glorious rewards of liberty and social advance- 
ment that follow. They will be instructed mainly 
into the foreign prejudices and superstitions of their 
fathers, and the state, which proposes to be clear of 
all sectarian affinities in religion, will pay the bills ! 



00 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

It will also be demanded, next, that the state shall 
hold the purse for the followers of Tom Paine and 
all other infidels, discharging the bills of schools where 
Paine' s Age of Reason, or the Mormon Bible, or Da- 
vis's Revelations are the reading books of the children. 

The old school Presbyterian church took ground, 
six years ago, in their General Assembly, at the crisis 
of their high church zeal, against common and in 
favor of parochial schools. Hitherto their agitation 
has yielded little more than a degree of discourage- 
ment and disrespect to the schools of their country ; 
but if the Catholics prevail in their attempt, they also 
will be forward in demanding the same rights, upon 
the same grounds, and their claim also must be 
granted. By that time the whole system of common 
schools is fatally shaken. For since education is 
thrown thus far upon the care of individual parents, 
still another result is certain to follow in close prox- 
imity, viz., the discontinuance of all common schools 
and of all public care of education ; and then we shall 
have large masses of children growing up in neglect, 
with no school at all provided to which they can be 
sent ; ignorant, hopeless, and debased creatures ; 
banditti of the street ; wild men of anarchy, waiting 
for their leaders and the guerilla practice of the 
mountains : at first the pest of society, and finally 
its end or overthrow. This result will be further 
expedited by the fact that many children, now in our 
public schools, will .be gathered into schools of an 
atheistic or half pagan character, where they will be 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 87 

educated in a contempt of all order and decency, to 
be leaders of the ignorance and brutality supplied by 
the uneducated. How different the picture from that 
which is now presented by our beautiful system of 
common schools, — every child provided with a good 
school, all classes and conditions brought together on 
an equal footing of respect and merit, the state their 
foster-mother, all property a willing and glad contrib- 
utor for their outfit in life and their success in the 
ways of intelligence and virtue ! 

Take it then for a point established, that common 
schools are to remain as common schools, and that 
these are to be maintained by the state as carefully as 
the arsenals and armed defenses of the country ; these 
and no other. Just here, then, comes the difficult 
question, what are we to do, how to accommodate the 
religious distinctions of the people, so as to make 
their union in any common system of schools possi- 
ble ? How the Catholics, in particular, are to be 
accommodated in their religion, in those societies 
and districts where Protestants are the majority ; 
how Protestants, where Catholics are the majority ? 

The question, how Pagans, Mohammedans, and 
Atheists are to be accommodated, is in my view a 
different question, and one, I think, which is to be 
answered in a different manner. They are to be 
tolerated or suffered, but in no case to be assisted or 
accommodated by acts of public conformity. I can 
not agree to the sentiment sometimes advanced, that 



00 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

we are not a Christian nation in distinction from a 
Pagan, Mohammedan, or Infidel. Indeed I will go 
further; assuming the fact of God's existence, I will 
say that no government can write a legitimate enact- 
ment or pass a valid decree of separation from God. 
Still, after the act is done, God exists. God is the 
only foundation it has of public right or authority. 
The state, indeed, is a fiction, a lie. and no state, save 
as it stands in him. And then as Christianity is only 
the complete revelation of God, otherwise only par- 
tially revealed, it follows that the state cannot be less 
than a Christian state, cannot any more disown or 
throw off its obligations to be Christian than an indi- 
vidual can. Nor in fact has our government ever at- 
tempted to shake off Christianity, but has always, 
from the first day till now. taken the attitude and 
character of a Christian commonwealth ; accepting 
the Christian Sabbath, appointing fasts and thanks- 
givings, employing military and legislative chaplains, 
and acknowledging God by manifold other tokens. 
Accordingly our schools are, to the same extent, and 
are to be, Christian schools. This is the American 
principle, and as we have never disowned God and 
Christ, as a point of liberty in the state or to accom- 
modate unbelievers, so we are required by no principle 
of American right or law to make our schools unchris- 
tian, to accommodate Turks and Pagans, or rejecters 
and infidels. 

Common schools, then, are to be Christian schools. 
How Christian ? In the same sense, I answer, that 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 89 

Catholics and Protestants arc Christians, in the same 
sense that our government is Christian, in the same 
sense that Christendom is Christian, that is, in the rec- 
ognition of God and Christ and providence and the 
Bible. I fully agree with our Catholic friends regard- 
ing what they say in deprecation of a godless system of 
education. Dr. Chalmers, engaged in a society to estab- 
lish Catholic schools in Glasgow, went so far as to say, 
that if he had not been able to obtain " favorable 
terms from the priest, that is, the liberty of making 
the Bible a school-book," he would still have perse- 
vered, " on the principle that a Catholic population, 
with the capacity of reading, are a more hopeful sub- 
ject than without it." Perhaps he was right, but the 
statistics reported in France, a few years ago, showing 
that public crimes, in the different departments, were 
very nearly in the ratio of education, increasing too 
in the ratio of the increase of education, are sufficient 
to throw a heavy shade of doubt on the value of all 
attempts to educate, that increase the power of men 
and add no regulative force of principle and charac- 
ter. It is, to say the least, a most perilous kind of 
beneficence. The chances are far too great that 
knowledge, without principle, will turn out to be only 
the equipment of knaves and felons. 

The greater reason is there that our Catholic fel- 
low-citizens should not do what they can to separate 
all the schools of the nation from Christian truth and 
influence, by requiring a surrender of everything 
Christian in the schools, to accommodate their secta- 



90 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

rian position. Or if they reply that they would wholly 
supplant the common schools, leaving only parochial 
and sectarian schools in their place, on the ground 
that our government cannot, without some infringe- 
ment on religion, be made to coalesce with anything 
Christian, then is it seen they are endeavoring to make 
the state " godless " in order to make the school Chris- 
tian. Exactly this, indeed, one of their most distin- 
guished and capable teachers in Pennsylvania is just 
now engaged to effect ; insisting that the civil state 
has no right to educate children at all ; not only con- 
troverting a constituent element of our civil order, 
but claiming it as a Christian right that the state 
shall exercise no Christian function. Which then is 
better, a godless government or a godless school ? 
And if his own church will not suffer a godless 
school, what has it more earnestly insisted on than 
the horrible impiety of a state separated from God 
and religion, and the consequent duty of all kings 
and magistrates to be servants and defenders of the 
church ? The Catholic doctrine is plainly in a dilemma 
here, and can noway be accommodated. If the state 
is godless, then it should as certainly withdraw from 
that as from the school, which, if it persists in doing, 
it as certainly does what it can, under the pretext of 
religion, to empty both the state and the schools of 
all religion. 

The true ideal state manifestly is, one school and 
one Christianity. But it does not follow that we are 
to have as many schools as we have distinct views of 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 91 

Christianity, because we have not so many distinct 
Christianities. Nor is anything more cruel and abomi- 
nable than to take the little children apart, whom 
Christ embraced so freely, and make them parties to 
all our grown-up discords, whom Christ made one with 
himself and each other in their lovelier and, God 
forgive us if perchance it also be, their wiser age. 
Let us draw near rather to the common Christ we pro- 
fess, doing it through them and for their sake, and 
see if we cannot find how to set them together under 
Christ as his common flock. 

In most of our American communities, especially 
those which are older and more homogeneous, we have 
no difficulty in retaining the Bible in the schools and 
doing everything necessary to a sound Christian train- 
ing. Nor, in the larger cities and the more recent 
settlements, where the population is partly Catholic, 
is there any the least difficulty in arranging a plan so 
as to yield the accommodation they need, if only 
there were a real disposition on both sides to have the 
arrangement. And precisely here, I suspect, is the 
main difficulty. There may have been a want of con- 
sideration sometimes manifested on the Protestant 
side, or a willingness to thrust our own forms of re- 
ligious teaching on the children of Catholics. Wherever 
we have insisted on retaining the Protestant Bible as 
a school book, and making the use of it by the chil- 
dren of Catholic families compulsory, there has been 
good reason for complaining of our intolerance. But 
there is a much greater difficulty, I fear, and more in 



92 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

vincible, on the other side. In New York, the Catho- 
lics complained of the reading of the Protestant 
Scriptures in the schools, and of the text-books em- 
ployed, some of which contained hard expressions 
against the Catholic church. The Bible was accord- 
ingly withdrawn from the schools and all religious in- 
struction discontinued. The text-books of the schools 
were sent directly to Archbishop Hughes in person, 
to receive exactly such expurgations as he and his 
clergy would direct. They declined the offer by a 
very slender evasion, and it was afterward found that 
some of the books complained of were in actual use 
in their own church schools, though already removed 
from the schools of the city. Meantime, the immense 
and very questionable sacrifice thus made, to accom- 
modate the complaints of the Catholics, resulted in 
no discontinuance of their schools, neither in any im- 
portant accession to the common schools of the city 
from the children of Catholic families. On the con- 
trary, the priests now change their note and begin to 
complain that the schools are " godless " or " athe- 
istical " ; just as they have required them to be. In 
facts like these, fortified by the fact that some of the 
priests are even denying, in public lectures, the right 
of the state to educate children at all, we seem to dis- 
cover an absolute determination that the children 
shall be withdrawn, at whatever cost, and that no 
terms of accommodation shall be satisfactory. It is 
not that satisfaction is impossible, but that there is 
really no desire for it. Were there any desire, the 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 93 

ways in which it may be accomplished arc many and 
various. 

1. Make the use of the Bible in the Protestant or 
Douay version optional. 

2. Compile a book of Scripture reading lessons by 
agreement from both versions. 

3. Provide for religious instruction, at given hours 
or on a given day, by the clergy or by qualified teachers 
such as the parents may choose. 

4. Prepare a book of Christian morality, distinct 
from a doctrine of religion or a faith, which shall be 
taught indiscriminately to all the scholars.* 

*I am not aware of any attempt that has hitherto been made to 
adjust an agreement on the basis of this distinction. The follow- 
ing beautiful card, prepared by Archbishop Whately, to be con- 
spicuously printed and hung in the Irish schools, was accepted by 
the whole Board, including the Catholic Archbishop ; in which 
we have, at once, an example of what I mean by the distinction 
stated, and also a proof that, so far at least, the distinction is 
available as a basis of agreement. 

"Christians should endeavor, as the Apostle Paul commands 
them, to ' live peaceably with all men ' (Rom. ch. xii, v. 18), even 
with those of a different religious persuasion." 

"Our Saviour Christ commanded his disciples 'to love one 
another.' He taught them to love even their enemies, to bless 
those that cursed them, and pray for those that persecuted them. 
He himself prayed for his murderers. " 

"Many men hold erroneous doctrines; but we ought not to 
hate or persecute them. We ought to seek for the truth, and to 
hold fast what we are convinced is the truth ; but not to treat 
harshly those who are in error. Jesus Christ did not intend his 
religion to be forced on men by violent means. He would not al- 
low his disciples to fight for him," 



94 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

3ut of these and other elements like these it is not 
difficult to construct, by agreement, such a plan as 

"If any persons treat us unkindly, we must not do the same to 
them, for Christ and his apostles have taught us not to return evil 
for evil. If we would obey Christ, we must do to others, not as 
they do to us, but as we would wish them to do to us." 

" Quarreling with our neighbors, and abusing them, is not the 
way to convince them that we are in the right and they in the 
wrong. It is more likely to convince them that we have not a 
Christian spirit." 

' ' We ought to show ourselves followers of Christ, who ' when 
he was reviled, reviled not again,' (1 Pet. ch. ii, v. 23,) by behaving 
gently and kindly to every one. " 

If I rightly understand, it is over Christianity as a faith, a 
divine mystery, that the Catholic Church claims a more especial 
jurisdiction, and not over the preceptive rules of conduct on the 
common footing of intercourse and society. Otherwise it must 
also assume a jurisdiction over many things in the province even 
of the common law, such as theft, perjury, slander, and all moral 
definitions that turn upon the question of "malice aforethought." 
And if it can not submit to any common teaching on these points, 
how can it submit to the jurisdiction of the state itself without an 
equal infringement of its prerogative? Is it then impossible to 
prepare a volume, in the manner of the above card, which, without 
entering into any matter that pertains to Christianity as a faith, or 
a grace of salvation, will yet comprise everything that pertains to 
the relative conditions of life, and even to God's authority con- 
cerning them ; — the Christian rules of forgiveness, gentleness, for- 
bearance, docility, modesty, charity, truth, justice, temperance, 
industry, reverence toward God, drawn out in chapters, and form 
ally developed; large extracts from the preceptive parts of the 
Bible, and its moral teachings; from the Proverbs of Solomon, 
from the histories of Joseph and Haman, from the history of Jesus 
in his trial and crucifixion taken as an example of conduct, from 
the moral teachings also of his sermon on the mount, the parable 
of the good Samaritan, the rule of the lowest seat, and other like 



COMMONSCHOOLS. 95 

will be Christian, and will not infringe, in the least, 
upon the tenets of either party, the Protestant or the 
Catholic. It has been done in Holland and, where it 
was much more difficult, in Ireland. The British 
government, undertaking at last, in good faith, to 
construct a plan of national education for Ireland, 
appointed Archbishop Whately and the Catholic Arch- 
bishop of Dublin with five others, one a Presbyterian 
and one a Unitarian, to be a board or committee of 
superintendence. They agreed upon a selection of 
reading lessons from both translations of the Script- 
ures, and, by means of a system of restrictions and 
qualifications carefully arranged, providing for distinct 
methods and times of religious instruction, they were 
able to construct a union, not godless or negative, but 
thoroughly Christian in its character, and so to draw 
as many as 500,000 of the children into the public 
schools ; conferring thus upon the poor, neglected, and 
hitherto oppressed Irish, greater benefits than they 
have before received from any and all public measures 
since the Conquest. 

I can not go into the particulars of this adjust- 

expositions ; enlivened also by those picturesque representations of 
Scripture that display the manner of human nature in matters of 
moral conduct, such as the parable of Jotham, the story of the 
ewe lamb, and the judgment of Solomon? In this way Christianity 
would have a clear and well-ascertained place in the schools. A 
Christian conscience would be formed, and a habit of religious 
reverence. And though we could wish for something more, we 
might safely leave the higher mysteries of faith and salvation to 
be taught elsewhere. 



96 COMMON SCHOOLS, 

ment, neither is it necessary. Whoever will take 
pains to trace out the particular features of the plan, 
will see that such an adjustment is possible. Enough 
is it for the present to say that what has been can be, 
and that if there is a real and true desire in the two 
parties to this coming controversy, to settle any plan 
that will unite and satisfy them both, it will be done. 
It may never be done in such a manner as to silence 
all opposition or attack from the ultra-Protestant 
party on one side, and the ultra-Catholic on the other. 
Bigotry will have its way and will assuredly act in 
character here, as it has in all ages past and does in 
Ireland now. The cry will be raised on one side, that 
the Bible is given up because it is read only at the 
option of the parents, or because only extracts from it 
are read, though the extracts amount to nearly the 
whole book, or because they are, some of them, made 
from the Catholic and some from the Protestant ver- 
sion ; whereas, if only this or that catechism were 
taught, with not a word of Scripture, no complaint of 
a loss of the Bible would be heard of; or if the 
Psalter translation were read, instead of the Psalms, 
it would be regarded as no subject of complaint at all. 
On the other, the Catholic side, it will be insisted that 
the church authority is given up, though every word 
and teaching is by and from it, or that religion itself 
is corrupted by the profane mixtures of a Protestant 
proximity and intercourse. Probably the bigots, on 
both sides, will have much to say in deprecation of 
the " godless system of education," and yet there will 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 97 

6e more religious teaching and more impression made 
of true religion, by that cordial and Christian adjust- 
ment of differences which brings the children of two 
hostile bands together in this manner, than by whole 
days and weeks of drill and catechism in separate 
schools. 

There is a great deal of cant in this complaint of 
godless education, or the defect of religious instruction 
in schools, as Baptist Noel, Dr. Vaughan and other dis- 
tinguished English writers have abundantly shown. It 
is not, of course, religious instruction for a child to be 
drilled, year upon year, in spelling out the words of 
the Bible, as a reading book ; it may be only an exercise 
that answers the problem how to dull the mind most 
effectually to all sense of the Scripture words, and 
communicate least of their meaning. Nay, if the 
Scriptures were entirely excluded from the schools, 
and all formal teaching of religious doctrine, I would 
yet undertake, if I could have my liberty as a teacher, 
to communicate more of real Christian truth to a 
Catholic and a Protestant boy, seated side by side, in 
the regulation of their treatment of each other, as 
related in terms of justice and charity, and their gov- 
ernment as members of the school community, where 
truth, order, industry, and obedience are duties laid 
upon the conscience under God, than they will ever 
draw from any catechism or have worn into their 
brain by the dull and stammering exercise of a Script- 
ure reading lessom The Irish schools have a distinct 
Christian character, only not as distinctly sectarian 



98 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

as if they were wholly Protestant or wholly Catholic. 
They are Christian schools, such as ours may be and 
ought to be, and, I trust, will be to the latest genera- 
tions, nor any the less so that they are common schools. 
Neither is it to be imagined or felt that religion has 
lost its place in the scheme of education, because the 
Scriptures are not read as a stated and compulsory 
exercise, or because the higher mysteries of Christian- 
ity as a faith or doctrine of salvation are not gener- 
ally taught, but only the Christian rules of conduct, as 
pertaining to the common relations of duty under 
God. What is wanting may still be provided for, only 
less adequately, in other places ; at home, in the 
church, or in lessons given by the clergy. It is not 
as when children are committed to a given school, 
like the Girard College, for example, there to receive 
their whole training, and where, if it excludes religion, 
they have no religious training at all. 

I do then take the ground, and upon this I insist, as 
the true American ground, that we are to have com- 
mon schools, and never to give them up for any pur- 
pose, or in obedience to any demand whatever ; never 
to give them up, either by formal surrender, or by 
implication, as by a distribution of moneys to ecclesi- 
astical and sectarian schools. The state can not dis- 
tribute funds, in this manner, without renouncing even 
a first principle of our American institutions, and be- 
coming the supporter of a sect in religion. It may as 
well support the priests of a church, as support the 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 09 

schools of a church, separated from other schools, for 
the very purpose of being subjected to the priests. 

But while we are firm in this attitude and hold it 
as a point immovable, we must, for that very reason, 
be the more ready to do justice to the religious con- 
victions of all parties or sects, and to yield them such 
concessions, or enter into such arrangements as will 
accommodate their peculiar principles and clear them 
of any infringement. 

But it will be objected by some, that while this 
should be done, provided there were any thing to hope 
from it, there is really no hope that our concessions or 
modifications will be of any avail, and therefore that 
they should not be made at all ; for they will only so 
far abridge the value of our schools without yielding 
any recompense for the loss. Nevertheless let us offer 
the modifications, offer any terms of union that can be 
offered without a virtual destruction or renunciation 
of the system ; and then if they are not accepted it 
will not be our fault. I very much fear they will not 
be, that an absolute separation of the Catholic child- 
ren from our schools is already determined, and that 
no revision of the sentence can be had. Still it is 
much for us to take away every excuse for such a 
determination, and every complaint or pretext by 
which it is justified. 

Then, having done it, we can take the ground ex- 
plicitly and clear of all ambiguity, that they who 
exclude themselves are not Americans, and are not 
acting in their complaints or agitations on any prin- 



100 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

ciple that meets the tenor of our American institu- 
tions. Nothing will be more evident, and they should 
be made to bear the whole odium of it. If to keep 
their people apart from the dreaded influence of 
Protestant Christianity they were to buy townships of 
land or large quarters in our cities, to be occupied 
only by Catholics, walled in by their own by-laws, and 
allowing no Protestant family or tradesman or pub- 
lican to reside in the precinct, no one to enter it 
without a pass ; and then to come before our legisla- 
tures in petition that we will distribute moneys to sup- 
port their roads, and pay their constables and gate- 
keepers ; they would scarcely do a greater insult to 
our American society than they do in these separa- 
tions from our common schools, and the petitions they 
are offering to be justified and rewarded in the sepa- 
ration. 

But we tax them, it will be said, for the support of 
the common schools, and then, receiving no benefit 
from the tax they pay, they are obliged to tax them- 
selves again for schools of their own. It is even so, 
and for one, apart from all resentment, I rejoice in it ; 
unless they have grievances put upon them by the 
organization of our schools, such as justify their with- 
drawal. We tax the Quakers for defect of military 
service and bachelors who have no children, and we 
ought, much more, to tax the refractory un-American 
position taken by these Catholic strangers, after we 
have greeted them with so great hospitality and loaded 
them with so many American privileges. If now 
they will not enter into the great American institu- 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 101 

tion, so fundamental to our very laws and liberties, 
let them pay for it and measure their deserts by their 
dissatisfactions. If they will be foreigners still 
among our people, let them have remembrances that 
interpret their conduct to them in a way of just em- 
phasis. 

Meantime let us be sure also of this, that a day is 
at hand when they will weary of this kind of separa- 
tion, and will visit on their priests, who have required 
it, a just retribution. One generation, or possibly two, 
may bear this separation, this burden of double taxa- 
tion, this withdrawal of their children from society 
and its higher advantages, to be shut up or penned as 
foreign tribes in the state, thus to save the prejudices 
of a discarded and worthless nationality ; but another 
generation is to come who will have drunk more 
deeply into the spirit of our institutions and attained 
to a more sufficient understanding of the hard lot put 
upon them, in this manner, by a jealous and over- 
bearing priesthood. Then comes a reaction both 
against them and their religion ; then a flocking back 
to the schools to reap their advantages. And it will 
be strange if the very measure now counted on as the 
means of preserving this class of our citizens in the 
Catholic faith does not, of itself, become one of the 
strongest reasons for the alienation of their children 
from it. Of this we may be quite sure, and it ought 
not to be any secret to them, that their children of the 
coming time will at last find a way to be Americans ; 
if not under the Pope and by the altars, then without 
<&iem. 



102 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

Neither let it be said that this is a matter which 
lies at the disposal of politics, and that our political 
demagogues will sell anything, even our birthright as 
a people, to cany the vote of a campaign. The ex- 
periment has just been tried in Detroit with a most 
signal and disastrous failure. In cases where the 
issue touches no religious interest or feeling of the 
Protestants, and the Catholics can be gained to throw 
a casting vote on one side or the other, the politicians 
will not deal altogether absurdly if they consent to buy 
that vote by some great promise ; and I have so little 
confidence in many of them, under the prodigious 
temptations of a canvass, as to take it for granted 
that they will stick at nothing which is possible. But 
here, thank God, is one thing that is impossible, and 
whatever politician ventures on the experiment will 
find that he has not worked his problem rightly, — 
that if Catholics can be often united and led in masses 
to the vote, so Protestants will sometimes go in masses 
where they are not led save by their principles. That 
our legislatures cannot and will not be gained to allow 
the ruling out of the Scriptures and all religious in- 
struction from the schools, as in Xew York city, I am 
by no means certain. I very much fear that they 
will. But that they can ever become supporters and 
fund-holders to ecclesiastical schools, or be induced to 
give up common schools, I do not believe. Whatever 
politician or political party ventures on that experi- 
ment, will find that he has rallied a force manifold 
greater against him than he has drawn to his aid. A 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 103 

point so thoroughly un-American, so directly opposite 
also to the deepest convictions of the great Protest- 
ant majorities of the country, cannot be carried, and 
if pressed, will suffice to fix a stigma that is immova- 
able upon any leader who is desperate enough to try 
the experiment. 

Here I will close. The subject is a painful one,. 
and not any the less so that the line of our duty is 
plain. It cannot be said by any, the most prejudiced 
critic, that our conduct as a people to strangers and 
men of another religion has not been generous and 
free beyond any former example in the history of man- 
kind. We have used hospitality without grudging. 
In one view it seems to be a dark and rather mysteri- 
ous providence that we have thrown upon us, to be 
our fellow-citizens, such multitudes of people, de- 
pressed for the most part in character, instigated by 
prejudices so intense against our religion. But there 
is a brighter and more hopeful side to the picture. 
These Irish prejudices, embittered by the crushing 
tyranny of England for three whole centuries and 
more, will gradually yield to the kindness of our hos- 
pitality and to the discovery that it is not so much 
the Protestant religion that has been their enemy, as 
the jealousy and harsh dominion of conquest. God 
knows exactly what is wanting, both in us and them, 
and God has thrown us together that, in terms of 
good citizenship and acts of love, we may be gradually 
melted into one homogeneous people. Probably no 
existing form of Christianity is perfect ; the Romish 



104 COMMON SCHOOLS. 

we are sure is not ; the Puritan was not, else wiry 
should it so soon have lost its rigors ? The Protest- 
ant, more generally viewed, contains a wider variety 
of elements, but these too seem to be waiting for some 
process of assimilation that shall weld them finally 
together. Therefore God, we may suppose, throws 
all these diverse multitudes, Protestant and Catholic, 
together, in crossings so various, and a ferment of ex- 
perience so manifold, that he may wear us into some 
other and higher and more complete unity than we 
are able, of ourselves and by our own wisdom, to set- 
tle. Let us look for this, proving all things and 
holding fast that which is good, until the glorious re- 
sult of a perfected and comprehensive Christianity is 
made to appear and is set up here for a sign to all 
nations. Let us draw our strange friends as close to 
us as possible, not in any party scramble for power, 
but in a solemn reference of duty to the nation and 
to God. I cannot quite renounce the hope that a right 
and cordial advance on our part, — one that, duly care- 
ful to preserve the honors of Christianity, concedes 
everything required by our great principle of equal 
right to all, and as firmly refuses to yield anything so 
distinctively American as this noble institution, iden- 
tified with our history as the blood with the growth 
of our bodies, — will command the respect and finally 
the assent of our Catholic friends themselves. And 
since God has better things in store even for religion 
than the repugnant attitudes of its professed disciples 
can at present permit, I would even hope that he may 



COMMON SCHOOLS. 105 

use an institution so far external to the church, as a 
means of cementing the generations to come in a 
closer unity and a more truly catholic peace ; that, as 
being fellow-citizens with each other, under the state, 
in the ingenuous days of youth and youthful disci- 
pline, they may learn how also to be no more stran- 
gers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints 
and of the household of God. 



IV. 

THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY A PRACTICAL TRUTH * 



It is most remarkable that our Lord Jesus Christ, 
at just the moment when we look to find him offering 
what is most of all practical and distinctive in his 
Gospel, most necessary in that view to its power in 
the earth, advances just the Christian Trinity and 
nothing else. His work is now done, and the hour of 
his final ascension is come. His disciples are gathered 
round him to receive their commission of trust and 
the farewell address, so to speak, of their Great 
Leader. Xow he will seize on the first truths of the 
kingdom and put them forward. No matter of mere 
theory or of idle curiosity will obtrude. He will give 
them counsel for the guidance of their future course ; 
cautions, encouragements, suggestions of heavenly 
wisdom. He will bring out the great truth of salva- 
tion, the change to be wrought in mankind, the man- 
ner and means of the change ; the way to preach, 
and what to preach, and all that is necessary to the 
established polity and wise conduct of the future 

* Contributed to the JVew Englander, November, 1854. Vol. XII. 



THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY. 107 

church about to be gathered in all parts of the world 
by their ministry. What then does he say ? " Go ye 
therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost." This, and this alone, is the commission. 
What then does it mean, that Christ himself, the sim- 
plest and most practical and, in the higher sense, most 
rational of all teachers, in a parting charge to his 
disciples, gives them not any truth or vestige of truth 
over and above this one difficult, ever to be contested 
formula of Trinity ? At first view the fact appears 
to have no agreement either with the time or with the 
general manner of the teacher ; but, as we pause upon 
it and ponder it a little more deeply, we begin to sus- 
pect that this formula of Trinity is given, simply 
because it is the Gospel in its most condensed term 
of statement, and is put deliberately forward in this 
manner in the foreground of the commission, as a 
general denomination for all that is practical in the 
Christian truth. And that such was the real under- 
standing of Christ sufficiently appears in the fact, 
that the commission given is itself a working com- 
mission. They are to go " teaching and baptizing all 
nations," and the converts made are to be baptized 
into the name of the Sacred Three, as being the name 
of that power by which alone they are renewed, and 
are to have their spiritual cleansing accomplished. In 
some deeper sense of it open to him, the Trinity, as 
we are thus left to understand, is the underlying 
truth, and contains the whole working matter of Jus 
Go-pel. 



108 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

No sentiment or opinion could be farther off from 
the current impressions of our time. That the Chris- 
tian Trinity is, in any sense, a practical truth appears 
in our day to be very generally unsuspected. 

Thus among the outsiders, the light-minded critics 
and worldly cavilers of profane literature, the Trinity 
is taken, ex concessis, for a standing example of the 
utterly barren futilities preached and contended for 
as articles of religion. 

The class of Unitarian believers handle the subject 
more seriously, and arrive at the conclusion, which 
they assert with peremptory confidence, that it is a 
stupendous theologic fiction, a plain absurdity in itself, 
and in its effects, one of the worst practical hind- 
rances to the power of the Gospel ; for how can it be 
less when it annihilates the simplicity of God, con- 
fuses the mind of the worshiper, and even makes the 
faith of God an impossible subject to the unbeliever ? 

Meantime how many of the formally professed be- 
lievers of the doctrine are free to acknowledge that 
they see no practical value in it, and will even blame 
the preacher who maintains it for spending his time 
and breath in a matter so far out of the way of the 
practical life, a merely curious article or riddle of the 
faith ! And how many others, even of the more 
serious class of believers, would say, if they were to 
speak out what is in their feeling, that they take the 
Trinity as a considerable drawback on the idea of 
God ! They would recoil indeed from the thought, as 
being even a blamable irreverence, of imagining any 



A PR ACT] C.\ L TRUTH . 109 

improvement of God; but it' they could think of him 

as a simple unit of personality, in the manner of the 

Unitarians, he could consciously be just so much 
more to their mind, and their practical relations 
towards him would be proportionally cleared and 
comforted. 

An issue is thus made up, it will be seen, between 
the ascending Redeemer, on one side, and a very gen- 
eral sentiment or opinion of the Christian world on 
the other, regarding the practical import of the Chris- 
tian Trinity. On the side last named, it is very com- 
monly asserted that it has no practical value, and is 
only a kind of scholastic futility which, if we do not 
reject, we receive as a faith wholly inoperative and 
useless. On the side of the Son of God himself, it is 
assumed to be, in fact, a condensed expression for all 
that is operative and powerful in the Christian faith. 
Protected by so great a name, it requires no courage 
in us to venture some considerations, from our human 
point of view, that may go to illustrate the intense 
practical significance of this great truth. For what 
Christ has given us from his higher point of authority 
evidently needs in this, as in other cases, to be natur- 
alized in our human convictions by a discovery of the 
want on our own side, which his truth is given to 
supply. Indeed it has often seemed to us that noth- 
ing is ever needed, as regards the evidence of this 
much litigated truth, but to know it in its practical 
uses, and perceive the sublime facility with which it 



110 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

limbers the play of our thought to all that is most 
transcendent in the divine nature and the new 
economy of the Gospel of Christ. 

In asserting the immense practical value thus of 
the Christian Trinity, we do not mean, it is hardly 
necessary to say, that the Trinity is practical in the 
sense of presenting something to be done or practiced. 
Neither is it practical in the sense of showing in what 
manner something else is to be done. It is practical 
/ only as an instrument of thought, action, self-applica- 
tion to all the great matters of the faith. What is 
more practical than human language ? And as^by the 
use of language our understandings are adjusted/our 
feelings expressed, our information received, our mind 
itself developed; so (by the Christian Trinity it is that 
our sense of God is opened ; )what he has done for us 
and will do, put in terms of ji&e ; all the relations of 
what he does in one part of his kingdom to what he 
has instituted and done in another, — mysteries of law 
and grace, letter and spirit, — played into our practi- 
cal apprehension, so that by mere names and signals, 
our faith is inducted into uses before we can discover 
reasons and settle definitions. The Trinity, in short, 
is so related to the Gospel and our approach to God 
in the faith of the Gospel, that the grace of it, with- 
out such a concomitant, w r ill be fatally baffled in its 
access and rendered practically inefficient. 

But this, again, we could not say of all the possible 
or existing forms of Trinity ; for it is not to be denied 
that conceptions of this great truth are held by many 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. Ill 

which are so Ear abhorrent from its proper simplicity, 
and so badly distorted by the perverse ingenuity of 
human speculation, as to oppose great hindrances to 
the practical repose of faith, and even to counter- 
act, in a great degree, the real benefit of the doctrine. 
We undertake to show the practical value only of the 
Christian Trinity, or Trinity of the Christian Scrip- 
tures. 

And the Scriptures offer no theoretic or scientific 
statement of the doctrine whatever, give us nothing 
pertaining to the subject in terms of logical definition. 
They assume the strict unity and simplicity of God, 
that he is one substance or entity, only one ; which 
one they also assume will, at least, be most effectively 
thought as three, a threefold grammatic personality, 
or three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. These 
persons are not even called persons, but are only set 
in the grammar of uses silently as such. Of course 
it is nowhere said or implied that they are three per- 
sons in the same sense that John, James, and Peter 
are three ; and the mere laws of grammar, in which 
they stand, support no such inference, any more than 
the grammar of sex supports a like inference respecting 
the real gender of the sun and moon. The three are 
persons, evidently, only in some sense that recognizes 
a radical unity of substance which is not true of any 
three men ; some tropical, or instrumental sense, that 
needs not any way to be, and cannot be, exactly de- 
finecL/ The plurality therefore, whatever it be, does 
not divide, but only more sufficiently communicates, 
the One. 



;i 



112 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

Our argument does not require that we should go 
into any discussion regarding either the evidence, or 
the interior significance of the Trinity. It fixes 
simply on the Scripture fact, a phenomenon occurrent 
in the Scripture, showing its practical use and neces- 
sity. And for the present, we shall speak as if it 
were only a matter of form or language, accommo- 
dated in that manner to our finite wants and uses, 
but before we close, shall ascend to a point more in- 
terior, and to higher apprehensions of the subject, viz., 
to the discovery of something more interior as a 
ground in the eternity of God, antecedent to the reve- 
lation in time. Our present concern is to show, that 
assuming the oneness and infinity of God, Trinity is 
needed as a way of conceiving God and working our 
piety towards him, in the matters of grace and 
redemption. So faiy Trinity may be regarded as lan- 
guage for Godyor as an expedient in the manner of 
the Sabellians. The argument for use or practical 
necessity, will be greatly simplified by including in 
the question nothing more than this : or at least, by 
including nothing more, till we have reached a point 
where the transition to a deeper view of the subject 
can be made with advantage. 

As a grand preliminary in this mode of argument, 
we need to observe, that in conceiving God, we are 
obliged to represent him, as we do all spiritual reali- 
ties, by images and figures taken from things we 
know. And then there is, of course, a sense in which 
the representation is true, and a sense in which it is 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 113 

not true, and exactly where the line is to be drawn, 
we often cannot tell more exactly, than simply to say 
that we speak in a figure. Thus we describe the 
heavenly state as a paradise, a garden, watered by a 
river, with trees of healing on its banks ; or we con- 
ceive it as a city, whose height, length, and breadth 
are equal, and whose walls are built of precious stones ; 
and then we cannot tell more exactly where truth 
ends and error begins, than simply to say that the 
representation holds figuratively, and not literally. 

Or we may take a different illustration, that will 
assist our subject in other respects. We say, and 
most of us have no thought of difficulty in affirming it, 
that God is a person, or a personal being. But a little 
reflection will show us, that the word person thus 
applied is only a figure derived from our finite human 
personality, and is, in fact, a strictly finite word. 
After all, God is not a person save in a figure, as we 
shall see at a glance if we ask what constitutes our 
idea of a person. This we shall readily answer out 
of our own consciousness, by saying that a person is a 
conscious being, an agent or intelligent self-active 
force, exactly what our consciousness conceives to be 
included in itself. But the moment we begin to recite 
the inventory of our consciousness, we find that almost 
every article in it is in such a type of measure and 
mode, that we cannot refer it to God at all. Thus a 
person or agent, as we conceive the term, drawing on 
our own consciousness, wills ; putting forth successively 
new determinations of will, without which new deter- 
8 



114 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

initiations persona lily is null, and no agency at all. 
But God never does that. His determinations are all 
passed even from eternity. So a person thinks, or has 
successions of thought coming in, as it were, in file, 
one after another. God never thinks in any such 
sense. As all his acts are done, so all his thoughts 
are present contemporaneously from eternity. A 
person or intelligent agent reasons, drawing one prop- 
osition out of others : in this sense God never reasons. 
A person remembers : God never remembers ; for 
nothing past is ever out of mind. A person hopes 
and conjectures : God does neither ; for the future is 
as truly present to him as the past. A person lias 
e-motions, simple movings out of feeling into the fore- 
ground of the hour. God has no such temporary 
movings, in which one feeling jets up for the hour into 
eminence, and takes the foreground of his life ; all 
movings or states of affection are in him at once, and 
appropriate exactly to their objects. And so we find 
that a very great part certainly of what we were 
affirming, in the assertion that God is a person, is in 
some other view not true. Literally, God is not a 
person ; for the very word is finite in all its measures 
and implications, because it is derived from our- 
selves. Figuratively, he is a person ; and beyond this, 
nothing can be said which is more definite, save that 
he is in some sense unconceived, a real agent who 
holds himself related personally to us, meeting us in 
terms of mutuality, such that we can have the sense: 
of society with him, and the confidence of his society 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH 115 

with us, as if he wore in truth a literal person like 
ourselves. 

There is a value in this last illustration, beyond the 
mere showing under what conditions of figure we are 
obliged to speak of the divine nature, and what are 
the conditions of truth in our representation. We 
do not remember ever to have seen the fact noticed, 
but we do exactly the same thing, as regards truth or 
intelligent comprehension, when we say that God is a 
'person, that we do when we say that he is three per- 
sons, and there is really no difficulty in one case that 
does not exist in the other. As we can say that God 
is a person without any real denial of his infinity, so we 
can say that he is three persons without any breach of 
his unity. Indeed, we shall hereafter see that he is 
set forth, and needs to be, as three persons, for the 
very purpose, in part, of mending a difficulty created 
by asserting that he is one person ; that is, to save 
the impression of his infinity. The word person is, in 
either case, a figure, and as truly in one as in the other. 
And if the question be raised, what correspondent 
reality there is in the divine nature to meet and 
justify the figure, there can plainly be no literal cor- 
respondence between the infinite substance of God, 
and any merely finite term, whether one or three ; or 
if we suppose a correspondence undefinablc and tropi- 
cal, it may as well answer to three persons as to one. 

Neither is there any difficulty in removing the 
logical objections so pertinaciously urged against the 
Trinity, on the ground that three distinct personal 



116 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

pronouns are applied to God, requiring us to regard 
him as a council or plurality of beings ; after which it 
is impossible that he should be one being. Grammatic 
laws and relations may as well pass into figure as 
mere names of things. Thus, to convey a certain 
undefined or indefinable impression, we may apply the 
feminine pronoun she to a ship, using a grammatic 
term of gender for a descriptive and representative 
purpose. And then, to represent or connect another 
impression, we may give the ship a masculine name, 
such as Hercules or Agamemnon. Whereupon the 
man of logic, scandalized by so great absurdity, may 
begin to argue that since the ship is feminine as to 
gender it cannot be masculine ; or if it is masculine 
then it cannot be feminine. But it will be sufficient, 
for any one but him, to answer that we use these 
terms of gender only to represent some indefinable, 
partially correspondent reality which we can signify 
by this short method better than by any other. So if 
it be urged that person means person, and number 
means number, by the inevitable laws of grammar, 
and that when we have called God three persons, it 
must be absurd to speak any longer of his unity, it is 
sufficient to answer, that there may be a representa- 
tive personality and number, as well as a representa- 
tive or tropical gender, and that any mere logical 
practice on the words will, in both cases, be equally 
futile and puerile. Indeed, the pronoun he applied to 
each one of the persons of the Trinity is itself a word 
of gender, as truly as of number and person, and it 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 117 

would not bo as great an offense to the majority of 
mankind to say that God is impersonal, as to apply to 
him the feminine pronoun. Why then should it create 
so great difficulty that God is represented as a Trinity 
of persons ? Why not go into a logical practice on the 
gender of the pronoun, as well as on the number and 
the grammatic personality ? There may, it is true, be 
a much closer degree of correspondence in these latter 
cases with something interior in God, — of that we 
shall speak hereafter, — but, for aught that appears, the 
logical process covers precisely the same kind of falsity 
in one case as in the other. 

But these are matters introductive and preliminary. 
We come now to the question itself, — What is the 
practical import of the Trinity ? Wherein consists its 
value ? It is needed, we answer, to serve two main 
purposes : — 

I. To save the dimensions or the practical infinity of 
God, consistently with his personality. God is never 
fully presented to the mind, or adequately conceived, 
except when he is conceived under these two conditions 
together ; viz., as a being really infinite, and also as 
existing in terms of society and personal mutuality 
with us. Accordingly we shall find, on the right and 
left of the Christian Trinity, two distinct views which 
are both fatally defective and mutually opposite to 
each other. 

First, the view of the pantheists, who are instigated 
by a desire to establish, or adequately conceive, tho 



118 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

infinity of God. Struggling after this, they spread 
themselves over all space and time and substance, 
and looking at the All, as an eternal going on of 
spiritual development under laws of eternal necessity, 
they call it God. Their God is the largest thought 
they can raise ; largest, that is, in extent, and con- 
taining boundary, but he is no person. Personality 
has been lost in the struggle after magnitude, or rather 
it has been actually dismissed as untenable ; because 
the word, logically treated and literally taken, presents 
God under conditions of time and date, waking up to 
create worlds, exercised by thoughts, remembrances, 
reasonings, attentions and affections personal, — all 
which is contrary to the rational infinity of God. The 
doctrine of God's personality is therefore deliberately 
cast away as being a logical and necessary limit on his 
perfection; for it is not perceived that though the 
word person is finite, it may yet have an application 
figurative, that is legitimate, and_ leaves all finite im- 
plications behind, availing only to set the infinite in 
terms of society with us. J The result is that God, in 
this rejection of his personality, becomes a vast plati- 
tude ; or if not this, a dreary, all-containing abyss ; a 
being unconscious, a fate, a stupendous IT, without 
meaning or value to our religious nature ; a theme of 
barren rhapsody and vaporing declamation, not a 
friend, not a redeemer, not an object of personal 
affinity, love or trust. 

Over against these pantheistic aberrations, we have 
the doctrine of Unitarianism, which represents God, 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 119 

in opposition to pantheism, as a being personal, and 
because of the supposed absurdities or rational im- 
possibilities of Trinity, one person. Clearing thus, at 
once, the dearth of pantheism and the contradictions of 
Trinity, it presents a universal Father, one person ; who, 
being a strict indivisible unity, is therefore no offense or 
stumbling-block to reason. The result is that the 
personality, or relational state of God is saved in the 
completest manner. God is a person, a simple 
unit of reason, a Father eternal, creating and 
ruling the worlds and doing all things for the benefit 
of his children. But the difficulty now is that the 
dimensions are lost, the infinite magnitude is practi- 
cally taken away. And precisely here, as was just 
now intimated, is one of the grand practical uses of 
Trinity. The Unitarians supposed that when they 
had carried out their doctrine and shown that God is 
a simple unit of fatherhood, they had gained a great 
point, cleared the confusion, reduced the absurdity, 
and presented to the world a being so lovely in his 
character and so rational in his evidence, that all in- 
telligent worshipers must rejoice and the world itself 
must shortly turn itself to him in love. But alas ! 
there was a fatal difficulty which they did not sus- 
pect, and which time only could reveal; viz., that in 
going on to assert the one God, always under the 
same figure of personality, till that figure became a 
well-nigh literal affirmation, the dimensions of God 
would be reduced to the measures of the human figure, 
and their one God, their Great Father, would be a 



120 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

name without magnitude or any genuine power of 
impression. We do not of course mean, when we thus 
speak, to imply that the Unitarian will become any 
the less a believer theoretically in the infinity of God ; 
or that he will not save himself from the letting down 
process, in a degree, by the great tokens of power and 
majesty he will trace in the worlds of matter, and the 
adjectives he will set about the name of God, such as 
eternal, infinite, all-present, all-seeing, all-powerful, 
the Creator, Governor, Judge of the worlds. All this 
he will do, and yet for some reason, he may not guess 
what the reason is, he, will be conscious of a certain 
decay of impression/ a diminution of tonic force in 
the idea of GocL/such as once it had before he broke 
loose from the absurdities of Trinity ; or above all, 
such as he discovers in the writings and history of 
his fathers, before they broke loose and led their chil- 
dren out, as they supposed, in the paths of intelli- 
gence and reason. An impression will finally begin 
to crowd upon him that there is, after all, something 
in the Trinitarian feeling not in his ; that their God 
is more a God, higher in majesty, and heavier on the 
soul's feeling. And the sense of this fact will by and 
by appear in other and more decisive indications ; as 
when, for example, poets, essayists, and nominally 
Christian teachers brought up in his doctrine, begin 
to be heard speaking in a heathenish and mock-classic 
way of "the gods." They will do it because their 
God, their one person or Father, has somehow lost 
magnitude in their impressions, and because there 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 121 

seems to be really more rhetorical power in the plural 

"gods" than there is in their boasted unity-of-reason 
God. 

It could not be otherwise. How is it possible to 
keep up the figure of a one personality, and be always 
seeing God under that figure, without finally dragging 
him down by the force of its finite associations, and 
subjecting him practically to its measures ? Suppose 
that by reason of some analogy discovered in the 
rock, God were always called, as he is a few times in 
the Scriptures, " The Rock," and conceived under no 
other name, does any one doubt that such an image 
would, by its natural associations, finally obdurate or 
harden, and in that manner radically vitiate, the con- 
ception of God's character ? He was familiarly 
known to the ancient race as the " Jehovah-angel " ; 
i. e., a visitor appearing in the human form to repre- 
sent and speak for God. Suppose then he had always 
been called The Angel, never conceived in any other 
way, how plain is it that he would be gradually let 
down to the grade of an apparition coming and going 
and acting in space ! What then must follow when 
he is spoken of and worshiped only in the type of a 
person, which is nothing but a metaphysically finite 
conception? One good point is gained, viz., the 
mutuality, the reciprocal relationship of God ; but 
with that everything necessary to the grandeur, the 
transcendent wonder, the immeasurable vastness of 
God, is lost or left behind. 

Setting now these two failures against one another, 



1'2'2 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

the failure of pantheism and the failure of Unitarian- 
ism, we perceive exactly what is the problem answered 
by the Christian Trinity. By asserting three persons 
instead of one. and also instead of none, it secures at 
once the practical infinity of God and the practical 
personality of God. By these cross relations of a 
threefold grammatic personality, the mind is thrown 
into a maze of sublimity, and made to feel at once 
the vastness, and with that the close society also, of 
God. He is not less personal than he would be under 
the one personality of Unitarianism, and is kept 
meantime, by the threefold personality, from any 
possible diminution under the literal measures of the 
figure ; for God cannot become either one person or 
three, in any literal sense, when steadfastly held as 
both.^/ 

In this respect, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, practically accepted and freely used, with 
never a question about the speculative nature of the 
mystery, with never a doubt of God's rigid and per- 
fect unity, will be found to answer exactly the great 
problem of the practical life of religion: viz.. how to 
keep alive the profoundest, most adequate sense of 
God's infinity, and. at the same time, the most vivid 
and intensest sense of his social and mutual relation- 
ship as a person. y And this, if I am right, is more to 
say than could be said of any other known or possible 
denomination for God. Regarded simply as a liter- 
arv exploit, if that were all. it is at once the profound- 
est practical expedient ever adopted, and the highest 
wonder ever accomplished in human language. 



A PRACTICAL TRUTII. 123 

Many persons talk and reason of this matter, as if 
it were the easiest, most extempore thing in the world, 
to make a valid and true communication of God, not 
considering cither the hard limitations of language, 
or the more stringent limitations of a finite creature's 
thought. In this radical and somewhat feeble assump- 
tion, we have the beginning of the Unitarian attempt ; 
as if it were nothing, could involve no mystery, no 
paradox, to give expression to the infinite God ! Who 
that can take Zophar's thought of his incomprehensi- 
ble, inconceivable majesty : " Canst thou by searching 
find out God ? canst thou find out the Almighty to per- 
fection ? It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do ? 
deeper than hell, what canst thou know ? The meas- 
ure thereof is longer than the earth and broader than 
the sea"; who, we ask, that can take up such a 
thought of God, will have it for a perfectly easy and 
simple matter to present such a being to the world ? 
Far more equal and fit to the true import of the 
problem was the answer of that wise heathen who, 
when it was required of him to give the definition of 
God, demanded a certain time for thought, and when 
the time expired, double the time, and then again the 
double of that, till at last, by so many delays, he had 
given the most expressive and truest answer possible ; 
declaring in that manner, the sense he had of God's 
inscrutable, inconceivable mystery. Who that has a 
mind really opened to the difficulties of the subject, 
will not see beforehand, that when such a being com- 
municates himself to the world, nothing will serve 



124 T11E CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

his object but some wondrous compilation of appar- 
ently conflicting and paradoxical images. — such ex- 
actly as we have in the Christian Trinity ': The very 
mystery, and all the conflicting terminology which 
the Unitarians undertook to clear and logically re- 
duce, had even a presumption in their favor. And the 
new explication they attempted of these absurdities 
of Scripture, their - Truth made Simple." it was even 
as clear beforehand as it could be afterwards, would 
be only a substitution of the little for the great, the 
feeble for the sublime, a merely childish half-truth 
for the grand. Avell-rounded majesty of the triune 
formula. Nothing is easier than the method of a 
'•Xorton's Reasons:" and when implicitly followed, 
nothing will more certainly show the problem resolved, 
how it may be possible, with only a moderate force, 
drudged in the ploddings of imilluminated scholar- 
ship, to empty a Gospel most effectually of all that is 
necessary to its life. It is no difficult task to make 
God intelligible, and set him clear of all terms that 
stagger comprehension : and then, when it is done, it 
is not less easy to rind that he is just as much dimin- 
ished as he is mote completely leveled to the logical 
understanding. Withdrawn from the imagination and 
reduced to the measures of logical practice, he will 
be, in fact, to the true Almighty Infinite God. what 
the wax-doll Napoleon is to the mysterious living para- 
dox of genius, before whose name and coming the 
nations shook with dread. J 

Regarding the grammatic plurality, or three per- 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 125 

sons, as a necessary means, in this manner, of pre- 
serving at once the personality and practical infinity 
of God, we ought perhaps to notice what is really a 
st liking confirmation of our suggestion, that the Old 
Testament word commonly translated God, Ulohi/n, 
is a plural word. Over this word, particularly as it 
occurs in the first chapter of Genesis, in connection 
with the phrase, " Let us make man in our image," 
there has been a good deal of frivolous and imperti- 
nent debate ; frivolous and impertinent of necessity, 
because the question raised, whether these pluralities 
are not affirmations of Trinity, is a fictitious and 
wholly unscholarly question. The true question is 
different, viz., what is the reason, for some reason 
there certainly was, why this plural name occurs and 
becomes accepted as the name of God ? Such a ques- 
tion opens up, it will be seen, a previous history in the 
word, conducting us back upon the great natural fact, 
that (plurality is a form of instrumentation for God 
or the divine nature, quite as readily received and 
for some purposes more adequate than a simple gram- 
matic unity. J In this respect, the plural name of the 
Old Testament answered some of the important condi- 
tions of the Trinity of the New. The pluralities intro- 
duced by means of the Jehovah Angel, the Memra or 
Word of the Lord, and by such uses or conceptions of 
the Holy Spirit as we find in the 51st Psalm, show also 
in what manner the advantages of the New Testa- 
ment Trinity are made up in the Old by another 
process, if indeed it is another, which many will deny 
We pass now, 



126 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

II. To another view of the Christian Trinity, in 
which it is seen to have a practical relation to our 
character and our state as sinners. Here it is the in- 
strument and co-efficient of a supernatural grace or 
redemptive economy. Not, as we sometimes hear, 
that an infinite atonement is wanted, which none hut 
an infinite and divine person could execute. That is 
only a very crude and distant approximation to the 
truth. The need we are here to discover is broader 
and more comprehensive, resting in the fact that 
God's universal economy is, in its very conception, 
twofold ; comprising at one pole, an economy of na- 
ture, and at the other, an economy of supernatural 
grace ; requiring, in order to an easy practical adjust- 
ment of our life under it, a twofold conception of God 
that corresponds ; for which reason the Scripture 
three are sometimes spoken of by Calvin and others, 
as composing an economic Trinity. 

In the department of nature, we discover, as we 
think, a realm of complete systematic causation. All 
events proceed in right lines of invariable sequence 
under fixed laws. But as (laws are only another name 
for God's will, or the action of forces representing 
his will, the system of nature becomes a symbol in its 
whole development of the regulative mind of God/ 
What we call the natural consequences are determina- 
tions of that mind in the same manner. In this view 
it will be seen that, if the universal economy included 
nothing but nature, the single term or conception God 
would answer all our necessary uses. So far there 
would be no discoverable economic need of Trinity. 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 127 

F>ut the universal economy is Larger and contains, 
of necessity, another and partially contending factor, 
snpernaturalism, even as the balance of the firma- 
ment is settled between two natural factors or forces 
always contending with each other. Nature is a realm 
so adjusted that, whenever any moral agent or race of 
agents casts off the law moral, a train of natural 
consequences forthwith takes them in hand for disci- 
pline or retribution. The action begun is that of dis- 
ease, disorder, pain, constituting what is fitly called a 
fall. The penal train is a run of justice, and the run 
is downward even forever ; for it is inconceivable that 
disorder should ever of itself beget order. As little is it 
to be conceived that we, who have broken up the ideal 
harmony of nature by starting a malignant and dis- 
eased action, should be able to will it back into a state 
of perfection or ideal order, which we cannot even 
conceive. To provoke and raise up nature was one 
thing ; to smooth and restore it, another. Nothing 
but. a force supernatural can restore the mischief, and 
without that any thought of our own self-clearance 
and self-preparation for a state of perfected health 
and felicity is even absurd. 

Inasmuch then, as the spiritual training of a race 
of free moral agents included the certain fact of their 
sin, there was, we perceive, a grand prior necessity 
that, if they are to have any advantage in existence, 
the scheme of God's economy should comprehend two 
factors, nature and the supernatural. And this again 
is the same, it will be seen, as to say that God wil) 



128 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

institute and actuate two realms of forces, a kingdom 
of nature and a kingdom of grace ; for as we have 
seen that (nature is the presiding will of God J so also 
must the supernatural be ; and then, the perfection or 
completeness of God's economy will consist in the 
orderly comprehension of both, under harmonizing 
principles of law and reason which are clear to him, 
but only imaginable to us. 

And now the question is, conceiving that we are in 
the state of retributive disorder to be recovered from 
it, related thus to God as the Head of the two econo- 
mies, and having our salvation to seek under their 
joint action, how we shall be able to conceive God in 
any manner that will set him continually in this two- 
fold relation towards us. /If we have only the single 
term Grod, then we must speak of God as dealing 
with God, contending with the causations of God, the 
grace-force of God delivering from the nature-force of 
God. If the work includes an incarnation, as we 
suppose it must of necessity, then it must be/ God 
sending God into the world.. Or, if it includes a 
renovating spirit within, then we go to God to give 
us God, and expect that God within will graciously 
master the retributive causations of God within ; all 
of which, as we may see, is a conception too clumsy 
and confused to serve, at all, the practical necessity 
of our state. There is, in short, no intellectual 
machinery in ,. a close theoretic monotheism ;f or any 
such thing as a work of grace or supernatural re- 
demption. We should even say beforehand, that no 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 129 

such thing can ever be; for bow can God rescue from 

his own causes and open a way through his own retri- 
butions ? Accordingly, it will be observed that where 
this Unitarian conception is held, there is also dis- 
covered an almost irresistible tendency to naturalism, 
and so to a loss or dying out of all that distinctively 
constitutes the gospel. God is the king of nature, 
and nature is the inclusive name of all that consti- 
tutes his dominion. There is, in fact, no legitimate 
place for anything but nature. Sin is softened, 
depravity ignored. Nature is conceived to be ideally 
perfect and the palpable disorders and deformities of 
the world are not regarded, in the admiration offered 
to its beauty. The gospel is education and the run of 
life is a course of development in right lines, without 
a reversal or new creation of anything. Indeed, there 
is no alternative but to say, as some are obliged in 
fidelity to their scheme itself to do, and have not 
shrunk from doing, that if we are saved at all, we 
must be saved by justice or the natural law of retri- 
bution. 

Now there is, we have already intimated, a higher 
and more comprehensive view of God's universal 
kingdom, in which it includes and harmonizes these 
two economies, viz., nature and the supernatural, and 
by these two factors, like the contending forces of 
astronomy, settles and adjusts its orbit. And the 
Christian Trinity gives us a conception of God which 
exactly meets such a truth, leveling it always to the 
practical uses of our life. 



130 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

Using the term God sometimes in a sense broad 
enough to comprehend all the complexities of his 
kingdom, we are able, when we need such aid for the 
practical accommodation of our faith, to lay hold of 
relational terms that exactly represent the two econo- 
mies in their action with and upon each other. First, 
we have the term Father, which sets him before us as 
the king of nature, the author and ground of all 
existent things and causes. Next, we have the Son 
and the Spirit, which represent the supernatural ; ( the 
Son coming into nature from above nature, incarnate 
in the person of Jesus, by a method not in the com- 
pass of nature, erecting a kingdom in the world that 
is not of the world j/the Spirit coming in the power 
of the Son, to complete, by an inward supernatural 
working, what the Son began by the address he made 
without to human thought, and the forces he im- 
ported into nature by his doctrine, his works, his life 
and his death. 

Having now these terms or denominations provided, 
we use them freely in their cross relations, as a ma- 
chinery accommodated to our sin and the struggles of 
our faith; putting our trust in the Son as coming 
down from God, offering himself before God, going 
up to God, interceding before God, reigning with God, 
by God accepted, honored, glorified, and allowed to 
put all things under his feet ; (invoking also God and 
Christ to send down the Spirit, and let him be the 
power of a real indwelling life^oursing through our 
nature, breathing health into its diseases, and so roll 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 161 

ing back fehe penal currents of justice to set us frec^- 
Haviiig these for the instruments of our thought and 
feeling and faith towards God, and suffering no fool- 
ish quibbles of speculative logic to intervene and 
plague us, asking never how many Gods there are, or 
how it is possible for one to come out from another, 
act before another, take us from or to another ; but 
assured of this, at every moment, that God is one and 
only one forever, however multiform in his vehicle ; 
how lively, and full, and blessed, and easy too, is the 
converse we receive through these living personations, 
so pliant to our use as finite men, so gloriously ac- 
commodated to our state as sinners ! 

Our argument for the twofold practical need of a 
Trinity, and the consequent practical value of the 
Trinity we have, is now sufficiently stated, and is 
brought, we think, to a point of rational conviction 
as decisive as the nature of the subject permits. Thus 
far, it will be remarked, we have nothing to do with 
the interior mystery of the divine nature. The argu- 
ment amounts to nothing more than that God, even 
assuming his strict unity, must needs be exhibited in 
this way, in order to the uses stated. Finding a cer- 
tain threefold designation of God given out in the 
Christian Scriptures, in which he is presented, in 
form, as three personalities, Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, we take up the subject at this point and show 
that, taken as means of divine representation, they 
are necessary to the adequate impression of God, and 



/ 



132 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

the practical uses of a supernatural and redemptive 
economy. 

But the question will be raised by many, at this 
point, whether after all, there is anything in God 
answering to these personalities? Some Unitarian, 
for example, having followed us to just this point and 
admitted the force of our argument, may require to 
be informed wherein the truth or reality of the triune 
formula consists, or what there is in God's nature to 
support these personalities of revelation? And to 
this we might well enough reply by handing back the 
question. Having shown the practical need of just 
what the Scripture gives, it is not therefore specially 
incumbent on us to settle all other and deeper ques- 
tions that may be raised. Let him bring the matter 
to that issue that will best satisfy himself. Let him 
stop at Sabellianism, if the air is not too thin to feed 
his breath. Or let him vault clean over, at a single 
stride of logic, if he will, and rest himself in the con- 
clusion that, since the three are persons, there must 
be three Gods, or a council of Gods. Enough for us 
that we have shown him the practical need of the 
Scripture Trinity. 

But we will not so dismiss the question, lest by an 
evasion of responsibility, at the point reached, we 
may seem to regard the Trinity as a matter only of 
words, and not in any proper sense an eternal fact. 
Our impression then is that a very great gain, as re- 
gards the intelligent apprehension of this subject, 
will be made by simply giving full place, at the out- 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 133 

set, to the admission that God is not a person or per* 
sonal being, save in some qualified and partly tropical 
sense. For we can every one see, at a glance, that he 
cannot, as an infinite being, be comprehended under 
any such finite term literally taken. And yet he is a 
person. Who of us except a few speculative panthe- 
ists, doubts that he is a person, or apprehends any 
want of honest reality or solid eternity in the word 
when he is called a person ? Doubtless the word is a 
figure, whether we have ever so thought of it or not ; 
but it does not follow that because it is a figure, there 
is therefore nothing in God to meet and support the 
figure. Precisely in the same way, and with as good 
reason, God may be a Trinity of persons. There is 
in fact no greater difficulty in conceiving God as three 
persons, than there is in conceiving him as one ; for 
he may as well be three without any breach of his 
unity as one without any breach of his infinity. 
Indeed, it may be and very probably is true, that what 
we mean by asserting the personality of God is simply 
to predicate of him that sociality, conversability, or, 
to coin a word yet more general, that relationality 
which is verified to us, and practically realized in us 
by the Trinity. 

However this may be, it is an important considera- 
tion, and one that goes far to evince the profound 
reality of the persons, that as God in revelation as- 
sumes all the attitudes and acts all the forms of per- 
sonality, so, in a like free manner, he displays a 
relative action of three persons towards each other 
and upon the world : God and with God, sending and 



134 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

sent, conversing with, ascending to, proceeding from: 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In all which the 
Trinity is seen to be not a matter of words only, but 
a reality of fact in the world of action. So far at 
least, the case is clear. What then shall we say of 
this tri-personality acted by God ? What account 
shall we make of it ? Is it that God will accommo- 
date himself in this manner to finite minds ? That 
would reduce the Trinity to an occasional matter, a 
voluntary expedient ; which would be a supposition as 
painful and quite as remote from all our most earnest 
convictions as to believe that his personality is a 
merely occasional matter, an act of voluntary accom- 
modation to our finite apprehensions, and not any 
part of his eternal property or idea. 

What then is it that gives us the impression, when 
we speak of God's personality, that it is an eternal 
property in him, a something which appertains to the 
divine idea itself ? It cannot be that he exists as an 
infinite substance in the mold of our human person- 
ality ; it cannot be that there is a core of literal per- 
sonality wrapped up in his infinite substance. It is 
not enough that he acts personality in a way of vol- 
untary accommodation to men. It can be only that 
by some interior necessity, he is thus accommodated 
in his action to the finite ; for what he does by the 
necessity of his nature as truly pertains to his idea, 
and is as truly inherent in him, as if it were the form 
of his divine substance itself. And precisely here we 
come upon the Nicene Trinity. This and all the 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 135 

formulas of Trinity that assert the " eternal genera- 
tion,*' affirm the unity of the persons as a unity of 
substance, — unoouaiot, " same in substance " ; and then 
regarding the eternal going on, so to speak, of God, 
~1iis living* process or act, actus purissimus, they find 
him eternally threeing himself, or generating three 
persons. These documents do not mean that God, at 
some date in his almanac called eternity, begat his 
Son and sent forth his Holy Spirit ; but that in some 
high sense undefinable, he is datelessly and eternally 
becoming three, or by a certain inward necessity be- 
ing accommodated in his action to the categories of 
finite apprehension, adjusted to that as that to the 
receiving of his mystery. 

This necessary act of God is sometimes illustrated 
by a reference to our necessary action, in the process 
of consciousness. Thus in simply being conscious, 
which we are, not by act of will, but by force of 
simply being what we are, we first take note of our- 
selves ; secondly, raise a conception or thought of 
ourselves ; and thirdly, recognize the correspondence 
of that conception with ourselves. And this we do 
as long as we exist, and because we exist. And some 
have gone so far as even to discover, in this fact, a 
parallel and a real explication of the Trinity of God. 
The illustration is reliable however, only as a demon- 
stration of the intensely inherent character of all 
necessary action. Were this three-folding of con- 
sciousness a matter of substance, it would not be 
more truly inherent than it is, regarded as an act. 



136 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

If then we dare to assume what is the deepest, 
most adorable fact of God's nature, that he is a being 
infinite, inherently related in act to the finite, other- 
wise impossible ever to be found in that relation, thus 
and therefore ia being who is everlastingly threeing 
himself in his action, to be and to be known as 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost from eternity to eter- 
nity, /we are brought out full upon the Christian 
Trinity, and that in the simple line of practical in- 
quiry itself. It is nothing but the doctrine that God 
is a being practically related to his creatures. And for 
just this reason it was that Christ, in the commission 
given to his disciples, set forth his formula of Trinity 
as a comprehensive designation for the gospel, and a 
revelation of the everlasting ground it has in the in- 
herent properties of God. He calls it therein as 
emphatically as possible his " everlasting gospel," a 
work as old as the Trinity of God, a valid and credi- 
ble work, because it is based in the Trinity of God. 
So glorious and high, and yet so nigh is God ; related 
in all that is inmost, most inherent in his nature and 
eternity, to our finite want, and the double kingdom 
of nature and grace, by which we are to be raised up 
and perfected for the skies : a being who is at once 
absolute and relational ; an all-containing, all-support- 
ing Unity, and a manifolding humanly personal love ; 
the All in all itself, and yet above all, through all, and 
in all ; of whom also, and through whom, and to whom 
be glory forever. 

How very distant any such conception of the Chris- 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 137 

tian Trinity may be from most persons, we are well 
aware. The most they look for in it, is to find that it 
is barely defensible. That it contains the whole 
staple of Christianity, they do not suspect, and will 
be ready, it may be, to set it down as a visionary and 
over-fond estimate of its import. With the greater 
satisfaction therefore do we hail the expression of a 
deeper and more adequate conviction, by some of the 
first minds of our age ; accepting in their words, the 
tokens of an ultimate return of the world to a more 
thoughtful spirit and a more truly Christian impres- 
sion. Thus Mr. Coleridge, — and who has given a more 
pervading and more thoroughly Christian impulse to 
the English mind of the day, than he ? — declares that 
" the article of Trinity is religion, is reason, and its 
universal formula ; that there neither is nor can be 
any religion, any reason, but what is, or is an ex- 
pression of the truth of, the Trinity." Neander, in 
like manner, and with a similar title to respect, calls 
it " the fundamental article of the Christian faith ; 
and we recognize therein," he says, " the essential 
contents of Christianity summed up in brief ; * * 
in which threefold relation the whole Christian 
knowledge is completely announced." (History, vol. 
1, p. 572. 

But these are testimonies of opinion, not of practice. 
There is yet another class of witnesses, even a great 
cloud of them, who are more to our purpose and bet- 
ter authorities than these. We mean those living 
myriads of God on earth and above, who, apart from 



188 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

all scholarship and philosophy, have been raised to a 
participation of God so transcendent in the faith of 
this adorable mystery. Why or how it is a truth they 
have not been able, and it may be, as little cared, to 
find ; for it had proved itself to their experience in 
such a raising of their consciousness and a communi- 
cation to them of the divine nature so indisputably 
witnessed, as to make them inaccessible to all the 
colder assaults of scepticism. Sometimes they have 
stated a Trinity to which there have been abundant 
reasons for exception, and yet they have found such 
practical virtue in that, as to be raised quite above 
the incumbrances added, and seem even to have had 
it for/a part of their joy to see how the fires of their 
faith could burn up all the chaff of their head. / The 
wise ones of the church and the speculative schools 
sometimes give them pity ; or, what is not far differ- 
ent, set them forth as the weaklings of the faith, who 
make a virtue of their ecstacies over what has been 
imposed upon their superstition. But the revelations 
of eternity will show who were weakest and most on 
a level with pity, they who could so readily fall into 
the abysses of the divine mystery, or the wise pre- 
tenders who stood questioning over syllables and refin- 
ing in distinctions, till they had shut away all mystery 
and taken up for God a dull residuum just equal to 
the petty measures of their understanding. 

Could we bring up this great cloud of witnesses and 
hear them speak to the question we have here on 
hand ; or could we but gather up the Avords in which 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 139 

they have recorded their experience in the faith, even 
these would contribute a weight of evidence to the 
truth we are asserting, and shed a glory over it such 
as to quite forbid the need of any other argument. 
Thus, for example, we should hear at Heidelberg, two 
centuries and a half ago, the distinguished Professor 
of divinity, Francis Junius, testifying that he was in 
fact converted from atheism by the Christian Trinity, 
or by the sense of God rolled in upon his soul by 
means of that stupendous mystery of the gospel. 
Having fallen into great looseness of living and be- 
come an atheist in his opinions, his Christian father 
kindly puts a New Testament in his hands, requesting 
him to read it, and the result is that, opening on a 
passage most of all likely as it would commonly be 
supposed to offend and fortify his scepticism, he is 
visited in its mysterious and sublime words by such 
a sense of God as overwhelms and instantly stifles 
the doubts which no mere argument of books and 
treatises had been able to remove. He shall give the 
account in his own words : " Here therefore I open 
that New Testament, the gift of heaven ; at first sight 
and without design, I light upon that most august 
chapter of the Evangelist and Apostle St. John. ' In 
the beginning was the word and the word was with 
God, and the word was God.' etc. I read part of the 
chapter and am so affected as I read that, on a sud- 
den, I perceive the divinity of the subject and the 
majesty and authority of the writing, far exceeding 
all human eloquence. I shuddered, was confounded, 



140 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

and was so affected that I scarce knew myself. Thou 
didst remember me, Lord my God, for thy great 
mercy, and didst receive a lost sheep into thy flock." 
(Bayle's Dictionary.) 

The testimonies of Christian experience rejoicing 
in this truth, are, of course, more frequent. Thus the 
mild and sober Howe, explaining in what manner the 
Trinity is to be connected with Christian experience, 
says coincidently with what we have advanced con- 
cerning the relational nature of the fact : " When, 
therefore, we are to consider God as related to us as 
our God, we must take in and bring together each of 
these notions and conceptions concerning Him ; we 
must take in the conceptions of each of the persons : 
i God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy 
Ghost is my God.' How admirable a thing is 
this ! How great and high thoughts ought we to have 
concerning the privilege state of our case ! Indeed 
there is nothing that we have to consider of this God, 
or to look after the knowledge of, to answer the 
curiosity of a vain mind, but everything or anything 
that may answer the necessity of a perishing soul. 
Whatsoever is requisite to our real felicity and blessed- 
ness, we may look to all that is in God, as determined 
by a special relation unto us." (Works, p. 1100.) 

Jeremy Taylor, holding the truth of the Christian 
Trinity to be a truth entirely practical, apprehensible 
therefore in its real evidence only by experience, says : 
" He who goes about to speak of the mystery of the 
Trinity, and does it by words and names of man's in- 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 141 

vention, talking of essences and existences, hypostases 
and personalities, priorities in coequalities, and unity 
in pluralities, may amuse himself and build a taberna- 
cle in his head, and talk of something he knows not 
what ; but (the good man who feels the power of the 
Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom, sanctifi- 
cation, and righteousness, and in whose heart the 
Spirit is shed abroad; this man, though he under- 
stands nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone 
truly understands the Christian doctrine of the 
Trinity." J 

Again, the Marquis de Renty, a distinguished French 
disciple of the seventeenth century, opens the secret 
of his own living experience in these words : " I bear 
in me ordinarily an experimental verification and a 
plenitude of the most holy Trinity, which elevates me 
to a simple view of God, and with that I do all that 
his providence enjoins me, not regarding anything 
for the greatness or littleness of it, but only the order 
of God and the glory it may render him." (Life of 
De Renty.) 

The testimony of Edwards, a man whose intellectual 
sobriety and philosophic majesty of character are not 
to be disrespected, corresponds : " And God has ap- 
peared glorious unto me on account of the Trinity. It 
has made me have exalted thoughts of God that he 
subsists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. The sweetest joys and delights I have expe- 
rienced have not been those that have arisen from the 
hope of my own good estate, but in a direct view of 
the glorious things of the gospel." (Life, p 132-3.) 



142 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

The celebrated Lady Maxwell, a follower of Wesley, 
is more abundant in these revelations. She says : 
%i Yesterday he made his goodness to pass before me 
in a remarkable manner, while attending public wor- 
ship. I was favored with a clear view of the Trinity, 
which I never had before, and enjoyed fellowship with 
a triune God. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, 
and felt my mind fixed in deep contemplation upon 
that glorious incomprehensible object, the ever blessed 
Trinity. Hitherto I have been led to view the Holy 
Ghost chiefly as an o,gent, now I behold him distinctly 
as the third person of the Trinity. I have in my own 
soul, an experimental proof of the truth of this doc- 
trine, but find human language perfectly insufficient 
for speaking or writing intelligibly on the subject. 
Eternity alone can unfold the sacred mystery, but in 
the mean time what we may and do comprehend of it 
is replete with comfort to the Christian." (Life, p. 
258.) 

It is impossible not to admire the Gospel formula, 
that can so flood the human soul in its narrowed and 
blinded state with the sense of God, and raise it to a 
pitch of blessing so transcendent. The amazing power 
of the Trinity, acting thus on the human imagination, 
and the contribution thus made to Christian expe- 
rience, cannot be over-estimated. 

After we have discovered, in this manner, how 
closely related the Christian Trinity is to Christian 
experience and all the highest realizations of God, it 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 143 

will Dot be difficult to account for the remarkable 
tenacity of the doctrine. No doctrine is more para- 
doxical in its terms. None can be more mercilessly 
tortured by the application of a little logic, such as 
the weakest and smallest wits are master of. None 
has been more often or with a more peremptory con- 
fidence repudiated by sections of the church and 
teachers of high distinction. The argument itself too 
has always been triumphant regarding the mere logi- 
cal result : for the fact is logically absurd, and there 
is no child who cannot so handle the words as to show 
that no three persons can be one. And yet, for some 
reason, the doctrine would not die ! It cannot die ! 
Once thought, it cannot be expelled from the world. 
And this for the reason that its life is in men's hearts, 
not in their heads. Impressing God in his true per- 
sonality and magnitude, impressing and communica- 
ting God in that grand twofold economy, by which he 
is brought nigh to our fallen state and accommodated 
to our wants as sinners, showing us God inherently 
related both to our finite capacity and our evil neces- 
sity, what can ever expel it from the world's thought I 
As soon shall we part with the day-light or the air as 
lapse into the cold and feeble monotheism in which 
some teachers of our time are ready to boast as the 
Gospel of reason and the unity of a personal father- 
hood ! Xo ! This corner-stone is not to be so easily 
removed. It was planted before the foundation of the 
world, and it will remain. It is eternally woven into 
the practical economy of God's kingdom, and must 



144 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

therefore stand firm. Look up, man ! Look up, 
thou sinner in thy fall, and behold thy God, eternally 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghpst, bringing all his vastness 
down to thy littleness ; (all the power of his will to 
release thee from the power of thy will ; acting, mani- 
folding, circling round thee, inherently fitted, though 
infinite, to thy finite want, and so to be the spring of 
thy benediction forever ! 

We are fully conscious of the tameness and poverty 
of the illustrations by which we have endeavored to 
set forth this greatest of all subjects. What can a 
mortal say that is worthy of this transcendent myste- 
ry of God ? Even if he should sometime seem to be 
raised in it quite above mortality, how can he utter 
that which is plainly unutterable ? Well is it if he 
does not seem rather to have blurred than cleared the 
glorious majesty of the subject, by the consciously 
dull and feeble trivialities he has offered. Indeed we 
could not dare to ofler a discussion so far below the 
real merit of the theme, were it not for the conviction 
that there is a lower and feebler inadequacy in our 
common holding of the theme, from which it is scarcely 
possible to detract. To hold this grand subtonic 
mystery, in the ring of whose deep reverberation we 
receive our heaviest impressions of God^as if it were 
only a thing just receivable, not profitable ; a dead 
truth, not a living; a theologic article, wholly one 
side of the practical life ; a truth so scholastic and 
subtle as to have, in fact, no relation to Christian 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 145 

experience ; nothing, we are sure, can be less adequate 
than this, or bring- a loss to religion that is more de- 
plorable, unless it be a flat denial of the mystery 
itself. In this view, we cannot but indulge a degree 
of hope that what we have been able to say, however 
insufficient or unequal to the theme, may yet have a 
certain value as a tract for the times, raising at least 
a question of respect for the doctrine where it has 
been renounced, starting other and worthier contem- 
plations of it where it is receiyed, and preparing some, 
in the legitimate use, to find [how glorious and blessed 
a gift to experience, how vast an opening of God to 
man, how powerful, transforming, transporting, this 
great mystery of God may be; We can wish the 
reader nothing more beatific in this life than to have 
found and fully brought into feeling the practical 
significance of this eternal act or fact of God, which 
we call the Christian Trinity. Nowhere else do the 
bonds of limitation burst away as here. Nowhere 
else does the soul launch upon immensity as here ; 
nowhere fill her burning censer with the eternal 
fires of God, as when she sings, — 

One inexplicably three, 
One in simplest unity. 

Who. that has been able, in some frame of holy 
longing after God, to clear the petty shackles of logic, 
and the paltry quibbles of a world-wide speculation, 
committing his soul up freely to the inspiring impulse 
of this divine mystery as it is celebrated in some 



146 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

grand doxology of Christian worship, and has so been 
lifted into conscious fellowship with the great celestial 
minds, in their higher ranges of beatitude and their 
shining tiers of glory, has not known it as being, at 
once, .the deepest, highest, widest, most enkindling 
and most practical of all practical truths ! 

Regarding it then as such, it is only a part of the 
argument by which we undertake to commend it to 
faith and a practical use, that we indicate, in a few 
brief suggestions, the manner in which its advantages 
may be most fully received, and with fewest draw- 
backs of hindrance and perplexity. 

First of all, then, we must hold fast the strict unity 
of God. Let there be no doubt, or even admitted 
question, of that. Take it by assumption that God is 
as truly one being as if he were a finite person like 
ourselves, and let nothing ever be suffered to qualify 
the assumption ; for the moment we begin to let in 
any such thought, as that the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost are three beings, we shall be thrown out of all 
rest, confused, distressed, questioning what and whom 
to worship, consulting our prejudices and preferences, 
and suffering all the distractions of idolaters. 

Holding firm the unity in this manner, use the 
plurality with the utmost unconcern, as a form of 
% thought or instrumental verity, by which we are to be 
assisted in receiving the most unrestricted, fullest, 
most real and sufficient impression of the One. We 
must have no jealousy of the three, as if they were 
going to drift us away from the unity, or from reason ; 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 147 

being perfectly assured of this, that in using the triune 
formula, in the limberest, least eonstrained way possi- 
ble, and allowing the plurality to blend, in the freest 
manner possible, with all our acts of worship, preach- 
ing, prayer, singing and adoring, we are only doing 
with three persons just what we do with one ; making 
no infringement of the unity with the three, more 
than of the infinity with the one. Let God be three 
persons forever, just as he is one person forever, and 
as this latter is a truth accepted without difficulty and 
held as the necessary truth of religion, so let it be our 
joy that he is a being who needs for other purposes 
equally dear, to be and be thought as three. 

Meantime we must avoid all practices of logic on 
the persons. We must take them as we take the one, 
which if we will put our logic on the term, will 
immediately turn out to be only a finite being, — a man. 
They are to be set before the mind at the outset as a 
holy paradox, that only gives the truth in so great 
power of expression that it defies all attempts at 
logic or definition. Seizing thus upon the living 
symbols, we are to chant our response with the Church 
and say : " God of God, Light of Light, very God of 
very God ; " and, if we cannot reason out the para- 
dox, to like it the better that it stops the clatter of 
our speculative mill-work and speaks to us as God's 
great mystery should, leaving us to adore in silence. 
Not that we are here to disown our reason. God is 
no absurdity as three persons more than as one. 
Fully satisfied of this, we are only to love the grand 



148 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 

abyss of God's majesty thus set before us and rejoice 
to fall into it, there to bathe and submerge our finite 
love, rejoicing the more that God is greater than we 
knew, taller than our reach can measure, wider than 
our finite thought can comprehend. 

Neither will it do for us to suffer any impatience, or 
be hurried into any act of presumption, because the 
Trinity of God costs us some struggles of thought, 
and because we cannot find immediately how to hold 
it without some feeling of disturbance or distraction. 
That is one of the merits of the Trinity, that it does 
not fool us in the confidence that we can perfectly 

^ know and comprehend God by our first thought. 
Simply because God is too great for our extempore 
and merely childish comprehension, he ought to be 
given us in forms that cost us labor, and put us on a 
' stretch of endeavor. ^ So it is with all great themes. 
The mind labors and wrestles after them, and comes 
into their secret slowly. Let no shallow presumption 
turn us away then from this glorious mystery, till we 
have given it time enough, and opened to it windows 

— enough by our praises and prayers, to let in the reve- 
lation of its glory. Let it also be an argument of 
modesty with us, and a welcome commendation to our 
reverence, that so many friends of God and righteous 
men of the past ages, such as bore a greater fight 
than we and grew to greater ripeness in their saintly 
walk, bowed themselves adoringly before this holy 
mystery, and sung it with hallelujahs in the worship 
of their temples, in their desert fastings and their 



A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 149 

fires of testimony. And as their Gloria Patri, the 
sublimest of their doxologies, is, in form, a hymn for 
the ages, framed to be continuously chanted by the 
long procession of times, till times are lapsed in 
eternity, what can we better do than let the wave lift 
us that lifted them, and bid it still roll on ! Glory be 
to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, 
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, 
world without end. Amen. 



V. 

SPIKITUAL ECONOMY OP EEYIVALS OF EELIGION.* 



We do not undertake the vindication of Revivals of 
Religion. The Divine Husbandry in them is rather 
our study. Shall we mask our conviction that here is 
a want which has long demanded grave attention, — 
that the views of this subject entertained by many 
are unripe and partial, their notions of Christian in- 
strumentality confused, and their practice desultory 
to the same degree ? The discredit accruing from this 
cause is really the heaviest argument that lies against 
revivals ; heavier than all the attacks of their adver- 
saries. Indeed, if we had it in hand to convince the 
adversaries, we know not how we could hope more 
effectually to succeed, than by unfolding the Divine 
Husbandry, the Reason of God's Economy in them, — 
which now is our attempt. 

The term revival of religion is one not found in the 
scriptures, and one to which we have decided objec- 
tions. It properly denotes a reviving of Christian 

*First published in the Christian Spectator of 1838, Vol. x; and 
in 1847 re-published in a small volume, entitled, "Views cf 
Christian Nurture, and of Subjects Adjacent thereto." 



SPIRITUAL ECONOMY OF REVIVALS. 151 

piety, where it has sunk into decline. We use it to 
denote a scene of conversion, of public exaltation and 
victory ; and, what is even opposite to its proper 
meaning, we use it as the name, not of a scene which 
is counterpart to a state of dishonor in the church, 
but of something which belongs inherently to the gos- 
pel itself, in the same way as preaching or the sacra- 
ments. And then, as the term itself is seen to be no 
accurate measure of the idea, a feeling of distrust 
arises in all thinking persons. It carries an air of 
falsity, which is undignified and painful to the mind, 
perhaps I should rather say an air of crudity or 
superstition, as if cant were substituted for intelli- 
gence. Or if it is heartily accepted, the more proba- 
ble is it that faith embraces some portion of error, and 
earnestness exults in a smoke of mental confusion. 
For words are powerful instruments, and false words 
can never be used without danger ; they mislead the 
action even of philosophic minds, much more of those 
who never think at all. Still the term revival has 
found a current use, and convenience will perhaps 
give it perpetuity. In this article we submit to the 
term, only endeavoring, since it cannot be avoided, to 
measure and guard its import. 

This not being done, and the real position, if any, 
which revivals hold in the economy of God's spiritual 
administration not being well ascertained by the 
Christian body, they are viewed by Christians them- 
selves, with all the possible varieties of feeling be- 
tween idolatry and distrust. Even the same mind 



152 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

often fluctuates between these extremes. To-day, the 
face of God is bright upon his people, and the whole 
community is, in a sense, visibly swayed by his power; 
and now, in the happy freshness and vitality of the 
scene, it is concluded that there is no true religion 
but in a revival. To-morrow, as the freshness of new 
scenes and new feelings is manifestly abating, there 
begins to be an unhappy and desperate feeling ; some- 
thing must be done ; religion itself is dying. And 
yet what shall be done, it is very difficult to find ; for 
every effort to hold fast the exact degree and sort of 
feeling, to make a post of exercises, which in their 
very nature have motion and change, only sinks the 
vital force more rapidly. But the calm at length 
comes, and now the prostration is the greater for the 
desperate outlay of force used to prevent it. A dis- 
satisfying look begins to rest, when it is reviewed, on 
the scene of revival itself ; discouragement, unbelief, 
sloth, — a long age of lead follows. Secretly sickened 
by what is past, many fall into real distrust of spiritual 
experiences. Many have made so heavy a draft on 
their religious vitality or capacity, that something 
seems to be expended out of the sensibility even of 
their conscience : they sink into neglects, or crimes 
close upon the verge of apostasy ; or they betake 
themselves to the cheap and possible perfectionism of 
antinomian irresponsibility. The extreme we here 
depict is not often reached ; but there is very often a 
marked approach towards it. The consequence is, 
that the religious life, thus unskillfully ordered, is un- 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 153 

happy, wears a forced look, goes with a perplexed and 
halting gait. 

Our present aim, then, is to ascertain the real office 
and position of revivals, — to furnish, if possible, a 
view of them which may be safely held at all times, 
and must be so held, if any steady and intelligent 
conduct in these matters is to be secured. We hope 
to establish a higher and more solid confidence in re- 
vivals, and at the same time, to secure to the cause of 
evangelical religion a more natural, satisfactory, and 
happy, as well as a more constant movement. 

They are grounded, we shall undertake to show, 
both in honor and in dishonor. They belong in part 
to the original appointment and plan of God's moral 
administration, in which part, they are only modes or 
varieties of divine action, necessary to our renewal 
and culture in the faith. For the remainder, they 
are made necessary by the criminal instability of God's 
people, or take their extreme character from unripe 
or insufficient views in their subjects and conductors. 
The two sides of the subject, thus stated, will require 
to be prosecuted separately. 

If we are to show revivals of religion in place, as 
a geologist might say, or as they stand related to the 
general system of God's works, purposes, and ends, we 
need, first of all, to show in place the doctrine itself 
of spiritual agency. In speaking of the divine agency 
in men, we are obliged to use many and various figures 
of speech, by way of giving sufficient vividness and 



15 4: SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

practical life to the truth, to make it answer its moral 
ends. We speak of the Spirit of God as " descending," 
or " coming down," or " sent down," as " poured out," 
as " present " in a given assembly or place, as " grieved 
away," or " dwelling " in the lieart of the believer. In 
all this, if we understand ourselves, we only drama- 
tize the divine action witli a view to give it reality 
and conversableness. But some, there is reason to 
fear, use these terms intending too literally in them. 
They separate the divine agency in men, from the gen- 
eral system in which it belongs ; they make the doc- 
trine special in such a sense that God is himself 
desultory in it, coming and going, journeying between 
the earth and the sky, while all his other operations 
go on by a general and systematic machinery which 
takes care of itself. 

The word of God sometimes speaks of the divine 
or spiritual agency in men, as if it were only a new 
or varied extension of the divine presence, and uses 
the term presence as convertible with Spirit. - Whither 
shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee 
from thy presence ? " " Cast me not away from thy 
presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me." 
" When the times of refreshing shall come from the 
presence of the Lord." 

Favored by this example, if we leave out of sight 
the distinctions of the trinity, which we may for the 
sake of greater simplicity in our subject, we shall 
readily see, that the doctrine of spiritual agency is 
grounded in the simple doctrine of God's omnipres- 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 155 

ence. Here it is in place. Of this, in fact, it is only 
a member. 

What do we mean by God's omnipresence ? If we 

k intelligently, not the extension, not the local 
diffusion of the divine substance. We mean, nega- 
tively, that we can conceive of no place above God's 
works or outside of them, where the divine nature 

resides : there is no such place. We are. there: 
obliged to think of God as in-resident in hi.- works. 
Xext we mean, positively, that God is potentially 
present, present in act and sway (whatever may be true 
of his substance, or of its relations to space.) filling 
all things. The most ready illustration of this sub- 
ject is the soul residing in the body. In what precise 
organ its throne is we know not : but virtually or 
energetically, it is all in every part. It is there to 
perceive, to have control and use. and it is one will 
which actuates and systematizes the action of all the 
parts together. 

Let it not offend, that we reduce the warm and 
glowing doctrine of the agency of the Holy Spirit to 
mere cold omnipresence. But rather let some just 
degree of warmth be given to the latter. — a doctrine 
chilled by the stagnant unbelief, and the more stag- 
nant philosophy of men. The true notion of omni- 
presence shows God in action everywhere, as much as 
in the matters of grace. He is in all things, not 
simply as staying in them, perchance asleep : but he 
is in them by a pies design, a ; 

moving all. advancing in all. towards his great ap- 



156 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

pointed ends. God is not entombed in his works. 
That vital touch, which the bier felt and sent into the 
quickened youth, touches all things and they live unto 
God. Forms are his pliant investiture. Laws are 
the currents of his will, flowing towards the ends of 
his reason. The breast of universal nature glows 
with his warmth. It enlivens even the grave, and the 
believer's flesh, feeling the Lord of the resurrection 
by, resteth in hope. When we reduce the work of the 
Spirit then in man, to a branch of the divine omni- 
presence, we seem, on the other part, to hear the 
eternal voice lift up itself to the worlds also, the 
forms, the forces, and thunder their holy inaugural 
through the burnished pillars of the universe, saying : 
" Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and 
that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you " ? 

But observe more distinctly, the doctrine of God's 
omnipresence does not affirm that he is present to all 
things in the same sense. Presence being identical 
with act and sway, it has of course this law in itself, 
that God is present to each thing according to what 
it is, and according to what he is doing with it. Thus 
he is present to matter as matter and not as mind, 
molding its forms, constructing its incidents. To 
vegetable natures he is present according to what they 
are, and according to their several growths and kinds. 
So to a man he is present as animate in body, in spirit 
an image of himself. If a man falls into sin, he is 
then present to him as a sinner, offended by his trans- 
gressions and averse to his character. If he under- 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 157 

takes to redeem, he is then present as prosecuting 
such an object : convincing of sin. righteousness, and 

a judgment to come. And now. if any one is brought 
to repentance, God is present to him in a still more 
intimate and glorious way. In all the orders of 
created being before named. God has found nothing to 
reciprocate his moral feelings ; but here he finds 
something which suits and sympathizes with his joys. 
his principles, his whole spirit. Here his holiness en- 
ters into a resting-place and a congenial hospitality. 
He calls it his home, his palace, his sanctuary, aud 
there he dwells, bestowing the cherishments of a God 
in friendship. This, by way of eminence, is called 
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But here the great 
law of omnipresence still pertains, — God is present to 
believers according to their character, their times, 
their works, their wants, and the great result he pur- 
poses to bring them to. We are to expect, of course, 
that there will be great variety in the manner of his 
presence, or, what is the same, in the kind of act and 
sway he will exert in them. He will strengthen 
what is good, fan out what is evil, shed peace, impart 
knowledge and understanding, invigorate hope, stimu- 
late, try, purify, — in a word, he will order his agency in 
every way so as to communicate more of himself to 
them, and complete them in his likeness. So Paul, 
contemplating the Spirit in believers under the figure 
of an air-medium, common, or present, both to the 
divine mind and to ours, says : •• the Spirit searcheth 
all things, yea, the deep things of God.' 5 Like some 



158 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

breath of wind, which has passed through fragrant 
trees and banks of flowers, searching them and bring- 
ing grateful flavors of them ; so the all-present Spirit 
ever wafts upon us the deep things, the hidden fra- 
grance and the treasured sweetness of the divine 
nature. 

The doctrine of divine agency in men amounts, 
then, to this, — that God is present to men, according 
to what they are and his purposes in them, just as he 
is present to material natures, according to what they 
are and what he will do with them. No man who 
believes in the divine omnipresence, the universal act 
and sway of God, can reasonably question the work 
of the Spirit in men. So far from being any pre- 
sumptuous claim in us to think that God works in 
us to will and to do, that he may mold us unto him- 
self, it is rather presumptuous to question it. To 
believe that God is present in act and sway to the 
vital functions of a finger, and not to a mind, or the 
character and welfare of a mind, is to reverse all 
notion of justness and real dignity in the divine 
counsels. 

If these reasonings concerning the doctrine of di- 
vine agency are somewhat dry and abstruse to the 
general reader, it is yet hoped, that such as are more 
practiced in questions of this sort, will have a higher 
estimate of their importance. They enable us to 
enter on the spiritual economy of revivals at a great 
advantage, and from ground high enough to command 
the whole field. 



OP REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 159 

It is too readily conceded, indeed it is often stoutly 
insisted on, even by those who may be called extreme 
revivalists, that everything of a periodical or tem- 
porary nature in religion is, of course, dishonorable 
and suspicious. The adversaries of revivals are 
ready, of course, to coincide. Further, they are 
specially offended, when it is claimed that God exer- 
cises any temporary or periodical sway in men. In 
their view it is nothing but a weak conceit, or the 
dream of a wild enthusiasm, when God is supposed to 
be specially operative in the conversion of men, at 
any particular time and place, or in any single com- 
munity. 

But if a periodical agency be so derogatory to God's 
honor, what shall be thought of the seasons, the in- 
tervals of drought and rain, and all the revolving 
cycles of outward change ? If the adversaries of re- 
vivals believe in God's omnipresence, is there not a 
presence of act in all these things, according to their 
nature and his purpose in them, as there is supposed 
to be in the spiritual changes which affect communi- 
ties ? On their principle, nature ought to perfect her 
growths in the scorchings of an eternal sun, or in the 
drenchings of an everlasting rain, and the flowers 
ought to stand, from age to age, as changeless as petri- 
factions. They ought to see, from year to year, the 
same clouds in the same shapes glued fast upon the sky, 
and the same wind everlastingly exact to a degree of 
their thermometer ought to blow upon them. But no, 
nature is multiform and various on every side. She 



160 SPIKITUAL ECONOMY 

is never doing exactly the same thing, at one time, 
which she has done at another. She brings forth all 
her bounties by inconstant applications and cherish- 
ments endlessly varied. A single thought extended 
in this direction were enough, it would seem, to show 
us that, while God is unchangeable, he is yet infinitely 
various ; unchangeable in his purposes, various in his 
means. 

Is it said however, that God acts in nature by gen- 
eral laws ? So doubtless he does in the periodical and 
various cultivation of his Spirit. All God's works 
and agencies are embraced and wrought into one com- 
prehensive system, by laws. Even miracles them- 
selves are credible only as being, in some sense, sub- 
ject to laws. But he is no less the author of variety, 
that he produces variety by system. 

Is it said, that God produces the changes of nature 
by second causes ? Is it meant, we ask in reply, to 
deny God's omnipresence ? Having instituted second 
causes to manage for him, has the divine nature gone 
upon a journey, or is it, peradventure, asleep ? Or is 
God still present (present, remember, by act and 
sway,) inhabiting all changes ? The notion of a 
second cause in nature, consistent with the divine 
omnipresence, — meaning any thing by the term, — it is 
somewhat difficult to frame. And as God's omni- 
presence is an undoubted truth, it is better and more 
philosophic not to displace it by one that is doubtful. 

But we pass on. And it is instructing to advert as 
we pass, to the various and periodical changes of tern- 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 161 

perament which affect men in other matters than re- 
ligion. Sometimes one subject has a peculiar inter- 
est to Hie mind, sometimes another. Sometimes the 
feelings chime with music, which again is not agree- 
able. Society of a given tone is shunned to-day, 
though eagerly sought yesterday. These fluctuations 
are epidemical too, extending to whole communities, 
and infecting them with an ephemeral interest in va- 
rious subjects, which afterwards they themselves won- 
der at and can in no way recall. No observing pub- 
lic speaker ever failed to be convinced that man is a 
being, mentally, of moods and phases, which it were 
as vain to attempt the control of, as to push aside the 
stars. These fluctuations or mental tides are due, 
perhaps, to physical changes, and perhaps not. They 
roll round the earth like invisible waves, and the 
chemist and physician tax their skill in vain to find 
the subtle powers that sway us. We only know that 
God is present to these fluctuations, whatever their 
real nature, and that they are all inhabited by the 
divine power. Is it incredible, then, that this same 
divine power should produce periodical influences in 
the matter of religion ; times of peculiar, various, 
and periodical interest ? For ourselves we are obliged 
to confess, that we strongly suspect that sort of re- 
ligion wdiich boasts of no excitements, no temporary 
and changing states ; for we observe that it is only 
towards nothing, or about nothing, that we have al- 
ways the same feeling. 

Need we say, again, that progress towards some end, 



162 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

which is the law of all God's works and agencies, nec- 
essarily involves variety and change. Spring, for ex- 
ample, is the first stage of a progress. The newnesses, 
therefore, of spring, the first beginnings of growth, 
must wax old and change their habit. So it is impos- 
sible that the first feelings of religious interest in the 
heart should remain. There is a degree of excitation 
in the strangeness of new feelings, and so likewise in 
the early scenes of a revival of religion, which belongs 
to their novelty, and which is by no means incon- 
siderable or improper. Such is human nature that 
it could not be otherwise. In fact, there is no reason 
to doubt that God, in framing the plan or system of 
his spiritual agencies, ordained fluctuations and chang- 
ing types of spiritual exercise, that he might take 
advantage, at intervals, of novelty in arresting and 
swaying the minds of men. These are the spring- 
times of his truth, otherwise in danger of uniform 
staleness. Thus he rouses the spiritual lethargy of 
men and communities and sways their will to himself, 
by aid of scenes and manifestations not ordinary or 
familiar. Nor is it any thing derogatory to the divine 
agency in the case, that the spiritual spring cannot 
remain perpetual ; for there is a progress in God's 
works, and he goes on through change and multiform 
culture to ripen his ends. Doubtless too, there may 
be a degree of sound feeling apart from all novelty, 
in a revival of religion, which human nature is in- 
competent permanently to sustain ; just as one may 
have a degree of intellectual excitement and intensity 



OF RE VI V a L S F B E LIGION. 163 

of operation, which he cannot sustain, but which is 
nevertheless a Bound and healthy activity. In writing 

a sermon, for example, every minister draws on a 
fund of excitability, which he knows cannot be kept 
up beyond a certain bound, and this without any 

derogation from his proper sanity. 

But we come to a stage in the subject, where the 
advantage of our doctrine of spiritual agency is to be 
more manifest. God has a given purpose to execute. 
we have said, in those who have entered on the re- 
ligious life, viz.. to produce character in them. To 
this end he dwells in them, and this is the object of 
his spiritual culture. And here, at the beginning, he 
encounters the general truth, that varieties of experi- 
ence and exercise are necessary to the religious char- 
acter. How then shall he adjust the scale of his 
action, if not to produce all such varieties as are nec- 
esaary for his object ? We have just remarked on the 
changes of temperament in men and communities, by 
winch now one. now another theme is brought to find 
a responsive note of interest What is the end of 
this ? Obviously it is that we may be practiced in all 
the many-colored varieties of feeling, and led over a 
wide empire of experience. Were it not for this, or 
if men were to live on from childhood to the grave in 
the same mood of feeling, and holding fast to the 
same unvarying topic of interest, they would grow 
to be little more than animals of one thought. To 
prevent which, and ripen what we call natural char- 
acter to extension and maturity, God is ever leading 



164 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

us round and round invisibly, by n^w successions of 
providence and new affinities of feeling. Precisely 
the same necessity requires that religious character 
be trained up under varieties of experience, and 
shaped on all sides by manifold workings of the 
Spirit. Now excitements must be applied to kindle, 
now checks to inspire caution or invigorate depend- 
ence. Xow the intellect must be fed by a seasuii of 
study and reflection ; now the affections freshened by 
a season of social and glowing ardor. By one mean> 
bad habits are to be broken up. by another good habits 
consolidated. Love, it is true, must reign in the 
heart through all such varieties : but the principle 
supreme love is one that can subsist in a thousand 
different connections of interest and temperaments 
of feeling. At one time it demands for its music a 
chorus of swelling voices to bear aloft its exulting 
testimony of praise : at another it may chime rather 
with the soft and melancholy wail just dying on its 
ear. And so. in like manner, it needs a diversity of 
times, exercises, duties, and holy pleasures. It needs, 
and for that reason it has. not only revivals and times 
of tranquillity, but every sort of revival, every sort 
of tranquillity. Sometimes we are revived individ- 
ually, sometimes as churches, sometimes as a whole 
people, and we have all degrees of excitation, all man- 
ner of incidents. Our more tranquil periods are 
sometimes specially occupied, or ought to be. in the 
correction of evil habits : or we are particularly in- 
terested in the study of religious doctrines necessary 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 165 

to the vigor of our growth and usefulness ; or we are 
interested to acquire useful knowledge of a more 
general nature, in order to our public influence, and 
the efficient discharge of our offices. In revivals we 
generally prefer the more social spheres of religious 
exercise ; so now the more private and solitary expe- 
riences may be cultivated. Such is the various travail, 
which God has given to the sons of men, to be exer- 
cised therewith. 

Another end prosecuted by the Spirit, in his work, 
is the empowering of the Christian body, and the 
extension of good, through them and otherwise, to 
the hearts of others. Here also there is no doubt that 
changes and seasons of various exercise, like these 
called revivals, add to the real power of the faith. 
We are so prone to think nothing of that which al- 
ways wears exactly the same color and look, that 
holiness itself needs to change its habit and voice to 
command notice, or impress itself on the attention. 
The power too of the Christian body rests, in the 
main, on its appearing to the world to be inhabited 
and swayed by an agency above nature. And this 
can never appear, except by means of changes and 
periodical exaltations therein. Nature would make 
no manifestation of him who dwells in her forms, if 
all stood motionless ; if the sun stood fast and clear 
in everlasting noon ; if there were no births, decays, 
explosions, surprises. Xature is called the garment of 
the Almighty, bnt if there were no motion under the 
garment, it would seem a shroud rather than a gar- 



166 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

ment of life. God is manifested in nature by the 
wheeling spheres, light, shade, tranquillity, storm, — 
all the beauties and terrors of time. So the Spirit 
will reveal his divine presence through the church, 
by times of holy excitement, times of reflection, times 
of solitary communion, times of patient hope. A 
church standing always in the same exact posture and 
mold of aspect would be only a pillar of salt in the 
eyes of men ; it would attract no attention, reveal no 
inhabitation of God's power. But suppose that now, 
in a period of no social excitement, it is seen to be 
growing in attachment to the bible and the house of 
God, storing itself with divine or useful knowledge, 
manifesting a heavenly minded habit in the midst of 
a general rage for gain, devising plans of charity to 
the poor and afflicted, reforming offensive habits, 
chastening bosom sins, — suppose, in short, that prin- 
ciples adopted in a former revival are seen to hold 
fast as principles, to prove their reality and unfold 
their beauty, when there is no longer any excitement 
to sustain them ; here the worth and reality of relig- 
ious principles are established. And now let the 
Spirit move this solid enginery once more into glow- 
ing activity, let the church, thus strengthened, be 
lifted into spiritual courage and exaltation, and its 
every look and act will seem to be inhabited by a 
divine power ; it will be as the chariot of God, and 
before it even stubbornness will tremble. 

We have spoken already of the probable fact, that 
God has designed to take advantage of novelty in his 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 167 

plan of spiritual action. Quite as great an addition 
is made to the efficacy of his operations, by the ad- 
vantage he takes of the social instincts of men./ 
There is no impression which is not powerfully aug- 
mented by participation. What a community, what 
a crowded assembly feels is powerfully felt. Hence 
it is an article of the divine economy in revivals, that 
whole communities shall be moved together, as it 
were by common gales of the Spirit. The hold thus 
taken of men is powerful, often to a degree even 
tremendous, and many a covenant with death is dis- 
annulled which no uniform or unvaried tenor of divine 
agency, no mere personal and private dealing of the 
Spirit, would ever have shaken. 

There is one more advantage taken of men by 
periodical or temporary dispensations, in the very fact 
that they are temporary. The judgment and obser- 
vation of many who preach the gospel will bear us 
witness that the certainty felt by those who are at 
any time enlightened and drawn by the Spirit, that 
they will not long be dealt with in the same manner 
as now, that by delay they may dismiss the present 
grace, and lose the most favored moment given them 
to secure their salvation, is the strongest and most 
urgent of all motives. This, in fact, is absolutely 
requisite to the stress and cogency of all means and 
agencies. Such is the procrastinating spirit of men, 
so fast bound are they in the love of sin, that how- 
ever deeply they may feel their own guilty and lost 
estate, nothing but the fact that God is now giving 



168 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

them opportunities and aids which are peculiar and 
temporary would ever foreclose delay. We need look 
no farther to see the folly of supposing, that God 
must not act periodically or variously, if he act at all, 
in renewing men. Why act uniformly when it would 
defeat all the ends of action ? 

This attempt to exhibit the spiritual economy of 
God in revivals might be prosecuted much farther. It 
would be useful too, if we could stop here to admire 
the wisdom of God's spiritual husbandry, the sys- 
tematic grandeur with which he compasses all his 
ends, and the illustrious honor that shines in his 
works of grace. 

But we must hasten forward. And here, on the 
second side, or the side of dishonor, we pass to views 
and exhibitions less agreeable, though not, we hope, 
less welcome. 

We should be sorry, if in what we have advanced, 
a shadow of countenance has been given to the im- 
pression that the Christian is allowed, at some times, 
to be less religious than at others. He is under God's 
authority and bound by his law at all times. He must 
answer to God for each moment and thought of his 
life. His covenant oath consecrates all his life to God, 
and stipulates for no intermission of service. At no 
time can he shrink from religious obligation, without 
dishonor to his good faith, together with a loss of 
character and of God's favor. Furthermore still, it 
is his duty and privilege ever to be filled with the 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 169 

Spirit, The believer is one chosen for his indwelling, 
thus consecrated to be the divine temple. And God 
will never leave his temple, except he is driven away 
by profanation, — grieved away. " I have somewhat 
against thee," said the Saviour, " because thou hast 
left thy first love." He did not require, of course, 
that the novelty and first excitement of feeling should 
last, but that love, the real principle of love, should 
lose ground in them was criminal. Let us not be mis- 
taken. The Christian is as much under obligation at 
one time as at another, though not under obligation 
to be ever doing the same things ; no intermission, no 
wavering or slackness is permitted him ; nay, he is 
bound to increase, or gather strength in his religious 
principles, every day and hour of his existence. 

But how shall we harmonize this with what we have 
advanced in the first side of our subject ? The answer 
is this : God favors and appoints different mocd.3 or 
kinds of religious interest, but not backslidings, or 
declensions of religious principle. There are diversi- 
ties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are diversi- 
ties of operation, but it is the same God who worketh 
all and in all. There is a common mistake of sup- 
posing that the Spirit of God is present in times only 
of religious exaltation, or if it be true, that such need 
be the case. It is conceivable, that he may be doing 
as glorious a work in the soul, when there is but a very 
gentle, or almost no excitement of feeling. He may 
now be leading the mind after instruction, teaching 
the believer how to collect himself and establish a 



170 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

regimen over his lawless will and passions, searching 
the motives, inducing a habit of reflection, teaching 
how to cany principles without excitement, drawing 
more into communion perhaps with God, and less for 
the time with men. And while the disciple is con 
ducted through these rounds of heavenly discipline, 
we are by no means to think, that he is, of course, 
less religious, or has less supreme love to God, than 
he had in the more fervid season of revival. A sol- 
dier is as much a soldier when he encamps as when 
ho fights, whin he stands with his loins girt about, 
and his feet shod with the preparation, as when he 
quenches the fiery darts of the enemy. The Chris- 
tian warfare is not all battle. There are times in it 
for polishing the armor, forming the tactics, and feed- 
ing the vigor of the host. 

These remarks bring us to conclude, that there is, 
in what we call revivals of religion, something of a 
periodical nature, which belongs to the appointed plan 
of God in his moral operations ; but as far as they 
are what the name imports, revivals of religion, that 
is, of the principle of love and obedience, they are 
linked with dishonor ; so far they are made necessary 
by the instability and bad faith of Christ's disciples. 
But here it must be noted, that the dishonor does not 
belong to the revival, but to the decay of principle in 
the disciple, which needs reviving. There ought to 
be no declension of real principle ; but if there is, no 
dishonor attaches to God in recovering his disciple 
from it, but the more illustrious honor, Thus it is 



P R E V I V A L S F It ELIGI N. 171 

very often true, when a revival seems to have an ex- 
treme character, that the faet is due, not to the real 
state produced, but to the previous fall, the dearth and 
desolation with which it is contrasted. And com- 
monly, if the ridicule, thrown upon a revival, were 
thrown upon the worldliness, the dishonorable loose- 
ness of life and principle which preceded, it would 
not be misplaced. 

We now pass on to a stage, in which dishonor 
attaches to the scene of revival itself. This is when 
it takes an extreme character, which is not given it 
by the Spirit of God, but originates in some mistake 
of opinion, or extravagance of conduct in the subjects 
and conductors. We cannot pretend here to specify 
every sort of error which may vitiate a revival, or give 
it an extreme character ; but w r e will note a few 
leading mistakes which have a prevalent influence. 

And a capital mistake is that of supposing, that 
we ought to have a revival, so-called, or the exact 
mood of a revival, at all times. It is taken for 
granted, when the peculiar fervor of the work begins 
to abate, that the disciples are sinking into sloth and 
criminal decay, and never, that the Spirit is now giv- 
ing a varied complexion to his work. Prodigious 
efforts are made to rally the church to renewed ac- 
tivity. The voice of supplication is tried. But all 
in vain ; it is praying against God and nature, and 
must be vain. Not that it must be vain in every 
case ; but only in cases where God's plan is otherwise 
ordered, or where the natural cxcitabilities of the 



LiZ SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

church are so far exhausted as to demand a different 
sort of exercise. Effort spent in this way produces 
additional exhaustion and discouragement. A tedious 
intermission of life follows. At length the suscepti- 
bilities of nature to excitement and attention recruit 
themselves, as by a very long sleep, and there flames 
out another period of over-worked zeal to be suc- 
ceeded as before. If, instead of such a course, the 
disciple was taught, as the revival, so-called, declines, 
that God is now leading him into a new variety of 
spiritual experience, where he has duties to discharge, 
as clear, as high, as in the revival itself ; if he were 
encouraged to feel that God is still with him ; if he 
were shown what to do and how to improve the new 
variety of state, taught the art of growing in the long- 
run, how to make the dews, the rain, the sun, and the 
night, all lend their aid alike ; in a word, if he were 
taught the great Christian art of discerning the mind 
of the Spirit, so that he shall be ever pliant thereto, 
and not to pass reluctantly into his progressive moods 
of culture and duty ; can any one fail to see, that ex- 
tremities of action would thus be greatly reduced ? 
He has not some strained and forced sort of religion 
to live always, which, after all, no straining or forcing 
can make live. The pendulum swings in smaller 
vibrations. There is no wide chasm of dishonor, no 
strained pitch of extravagance, but only a sacred ebb 
and flow of various but healthful zeal. It is the great 
evil in that sort of teaching, which insists on the duty 
of being always in what is called a revival state, that 



OF REVIVALS OP RELIGION. 173 

it tries to force an impossible religion. The supposed 
obligation is assented to, and the Christian struggles 
hard to answer it. But nature struggles against him, 
being utterly unable to keep up such a state. At 
length he yields, in a perplexed and half-despairing 
manner, not knowing what it means. Still he owns 
very dutifully that it is his sin, and as he tries no 
more to avoid it, he seems to himself to be sinning 
by actual and daily consent ; and this becomes in fact 
the real temper of his heart. He gives over all care 
of his spirit, violates his conscience in other ways, 
since he must do it in one, and sinks into extreme 
declension. More judicious views of duty would have 
saved him. 

The feeling, extensively prevalent, that if anything 
is to be done in religion, some great operation must 
be started, is another pernicious mistake. The ordi- 
nary must give way to the extraordinary. Machinery 
must be constructed, and a grand palpable onset 
moved. Let it not be suspected that we are afraid of 
all stir and excitement. The views advanced in the 
former part of our subject should teach us higher 
wisdom. The greatest and best actions have ever 
been performed in stages of excited feeling and high 
personal exaltation. Nothing was ever achieved, in 
the way of a great and radical change in men or com- 
munities, without some degree of excitement ; and 
if any one expects to carry on the cause of salvation 
by a steady rolling on the same dead level, and fears 
continually lest the axles wax hot and kindle into a 



174 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

flame, he is too timorous to hold the reins in the Lord's 
chariot. What we complain of and resist is, the arti- 
ficial firework, the extraordinary, combined jump and 
stir, supposed to be requisite when any thing is to be 
done. It seems often not to be known, that there is 
a more efficacious way, and that the extraordinary 
got up in action, as in rhetoric, is impotence itself. It 
must come to pass naturally, or emerge as a natural 
crisis of the ordinary, if it is to have any consequence. 
How often would the minister of Christ, for example, 
who is trying to marshal a movement, do a more 
effectual work in simply reviewing his own deficiencies 
of heart and duty, charging himself anew with his 
responsibilities, and devoting himself more faith- 
fully to his people and to God's whole truth ! A 
secret work thus begun, is enough to heave in due 
time a whole community ; and it is the more power- 
ful, because it moves in the legitimate order of action. 
It begins, bowing to duty first and chief, and leaves 
results for the most part to come in their natural 
shape. It works in the hand of God, trustfully, hum- 
bly, pertinaciously, and following whithersoever he 
leads. And when God leads his servant, as certainly 
he will, into a crisis of great moment, he is in it 
naturally, he molds it unto himself, as if constituted 
for the time to be its presiding power. 

Where too much is made of conversions, or where 
they are taken as the measure of all good, it has a 
very injurious influence. The saying constantly re- 
peated and without qualification, that it is the great 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 175 

business of the gospel and of Christian effort to con- 
vert men, has about as much error as truth in it. As 
well might it be said, that the great business of trav- 
elers is to set out on journeys. The great business of 
the gospel is to form men to G-od. Conversion, if it 
be any thing which it ought to be, is the beginning of 
the work, and the convert is a disciple, a scholar, just 
beginning to learn. If all the attention of the church 
then be drawn to the single point of securing conver- 
sions, without any regard to the ripening of them ; if 
it be supposed that nothing is of course doing when 
there are no conversions ; if there is no thought of 
cultivation, no valuation of knowledge and character, 
no conviction of the truth that one Christian well 
formed and taken care of is worth a hundred mere 
beginners, who are in danger perhaps of proving that 
they never began at all ; if revivals themselves are 
graduated in their value only by the number of con- 
verts, and Christians in declension are called to re- 
pentance only for the sake of the unconverted public; 
the whole strain of movement and impression is one- 
sided, distorted, and tinctured with inherent extrava- 
gance. 

We name only one more mistake having a per- 
nicious influence on the character of revivals, which 
is, the want of a judicious estimate of the advantages 
to be gained, in times of non-revival. This is the 
great practical error of our times. Let it startle no 
one, if we declare our conviction, that religion has as 
deep an interest in the proper conduct of times of 



176 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

non-revival, as in these periods of glowing excitement. 
For many religious purposes, and those not the least 
important, a revival is less advantageous than other 
times. There is very little trial of principle in a re- 
vival, as is proved by facts always developed after- 
wards, in some of the brightest examples of supposed 
conversion. The time, pre-eminently the time to 
strengthen principle and consolidate character, is 
when there is no public excitement. And for this 
reason, God's spiritual husbandry includes such times, 
and makes them so prolonged as to constitute the 
greater part of life, showing very conclusively the 
estimate he has of them. At such times, the disciple 
is occupied more in study and doctrine, in self -inspec- 
tion, in contemplation of God, in acting from princi- 
ple separately from impulse. In times of revival, 
foundations are broken up, and new impulses received ; 
now, these impulses are consolidated into principle, 
and permanently enthroned in the heart. This, at 
least, ought to be so. And because it is not, revivals, 
when they come, have less power, and a more limited 
sphere of influence. They are looked on often, by 
those who weigh their effects, as only shallow frets of 
excitement, and in many cases, none but the less con- 
siderate and feebler class of minds feel their power. 
Let not the intervals of revival be undervalued, or 
the duties belonging to them disesteemed. Great oc- 
casions are not necessary to good actions. To every 
thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose 
under the sun. He hath made every thing beauti- 
ful in his time. 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 177 

We have thus attempted to ascertain the divine 
economy in revivals of religion. We see them to be 
in no degree desultory, except as they partake of hu- 
man errors and infirmities. They lie imbedded in 
that great system of universal being and event, which 
the divine omnipresence fills, actuates, and warms 
Here they are cherished, and will be, as long as the 
redemption of man is dear to the eternal heart, and 
constitutes one of the ends of God's pursuit. As the 
gospel gains enlargement in the world, and the Chris- 
tian mind is enlightened, they will gradually lose their 
extreme and dishonorable incidents, and will consti- 
tute an ebb and flow, measured only by the pulses of 
the Spirit. The church will then make a glowing, 
various, and happy impression. Her armor, though 
changed, will always shine, and will have a celestial 
temper in it. Changing her front, she will yet always 
present a host clad in the full panoply of God. 

But really to act on views like these, and give them 
their legitimate effect, would require the gospel minis- 
ters, or many of them, to change somewhat the tone, 
and enlarge the sphere of their instructions. Many 
would need to acquire a nicer, more complete and pro- 
portional sense of character themselves, and thus learn 
to go beyond the line of exercises which only urge 
repentance, and test the state of their people. By 
this confined method, this continual beating on the 
same spot, they only produce a sense of soreness, 
which recoils from their attempts. It were only nec- 
essary to open the epistles of Paul, we should sup- 



178 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

pose, to see, that he moved in a range of topics and 
duties which find no place in the concern of many 
modern preachers, — discontent, envy, anger, jealousy, 
ambition, gentleness, purity, modesty, decency, can- 
dor, industry, — a catalogue that cannot be recited. 
We see at once, that he does not regard the religious 
character in his converts as a thing by itself, a con- 
version well tested and followed by a few duties 
specially religious. He considered the whole charac- 
ter of the disciple, — mind, manners, habits, princi- 
ples, — as the Lord's property. He felt that the gos- 
pel was intended and fitted to act on every thing evil 
and ungraceful in man's character, and applied it to 
that purpose. And thus he sought to present his 
disciples perfect and complete in all the will of God ; 
a much more difficult and laborious way of preaching 
than the one to which indolence, we fear, now adds 
prevalence. Let the minister of truth then occupy 
such intervals as are suitable, and which we have 
supposed to be ordered of the Spirit for that purpose, 
in forming the character of his people to things lovely 
and of good report. Let him take advantage of 
scripture history, and especially of the history of 
Christ's life and manners, to draw out illustrations of 
character, and beget what is so much needed by the 
Christian body, a sense of character, of moral beauty 
and completeness. Let him not use the parable of the 
talents always to enforce the duty of usefulness. 
Sometimes, at least, let mention be made of doubling 
the talents, making the ten twenty, the five ten. Let 



OP REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 179 

him follow the people into their business, into their 
civil duties, and especially into their domestic rela- 
tions ; showing the manner in which children may be 
trained up as Christians in the nurture of the Lord ; 
seeking to surround the Christian homes with Chris- 
tian graces ; teaching how to make them pleasant to 
the youth, and at the same time spiritually healthful. 
And let him do all this in the manner of Paul or 
Oberlin, as a work of the Spirit, a work into which 
the Holy Spirit leads him as truly as into any other. 
The tendrils of the vines are small things, but yet 
they support the grapes. In like manner this dispo- 
sition to adorn the doctrine of Christ by a nice obedi- 
ence and a faithful copying of the Saviour, is that 
which knits the Christian, tendril-like, to God's sup- 
port. On the other hand, the gross movement, 
always aiming at a chief point of Christian character, 
without any care to finish a Christian conscience and 
a Christian taste, is only trying to make the vines 
adhere by their trunks. 

We are not without a sense of deep responsibility 
in giving these views to the public. If they are mis- 
understood or misapplied, they may work incredible 
injury. We are anxious indeed, lest they be perverted 
to the justification of real declension from God and 
made to sanction a lower and perhaps more incon- 
stant piety than we now have. And yet we are sure 
that they provide for a higher class of attainments, a 
more constant growth towards God, and favor the 
preparation of a new order of Christians who shall 



180 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 

really walk by faith from year to year. In showing 
the use and necessity of times of non-revival, we do 
not justify the present habit of Christian declension 
in these intervals ; we rather show the sinfulness of 
it, that it is unnecessary, that it is a rank abuse of 
sacred means and privileges. We make it possible 
for the Christian at such times to be as holy, to do as 
good a work, to have the communion of God as really 
as in a revival, and since it is possible to be done, it 
is only faithlessness, without excuse, when it is other- 
wise. 

Our doctrine naturally terminates here, — in proving 
it to be the great business and art of the Christian to 
watch for the mind of the Spirit, and shape the life 
evermore pliantly thereto. They that walk in the 
Spirit, shall be led by the Spirit ; this we firmly be- 
lieve. Hence the Saviour was at great pains to incul- 
cate on the disciples readiness, watching for their 
Lord's coming, and observation of the signs of the 
times. And his Spirit is to help their infirmity of 
discernment, and guide them by his intercessions or 
inward intercourses to such praying, such work and 
occupations as are according to God's will. " I will 
guide thee with mine eye," is the sure declaration of 
God. But in order to this, the Christian must look 
at the indications of his eye ; and in order to this he 
must have a single eye himself. He must walk by 
faith, he must never acquiesce in sin, he must never 
allow the world to get dominion over him. Doing 
this, he will be directed what to do, and where to go, 



OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 181 

exercised in the best ways, led to perform the best 
service. The eye of the Lord will lead him about 
through all the rounds of the Spirit, and the glory of 
the divine holiness will ever encompass him. 

Christian ! man renewed by grace, dost thou in- 
deed believe that God inhabits thee with his holiness, 
and makes thee his temple ? Be thou then a temple 
indeed, a sacred place to him. Exclude covetousness ; 
make not thy Father's house a house of merchandize. 
Deem every sin a sacrilege. Let all thy thoughts 
within, like white-robed priests, move round the altar 
and keep the fire burning. Let thine affections be 
always a cloud, filling the room and inwrapping thy 
priest-like thoughts. Let thy hallowed desires be ever 
fanning the mercy-seat with their wings. 



VI. 

PULPIT TALENT.* 



There was never a time. I think, when so much was 
made of talented preaching, and talents for preach- 
ing, as now. I wish we understood a good deal better 
what we mean by it. Every young candidate wants 
the talents of course, and everybody is very decided 
in the opinion that he must have them. Even the 
little new hamlets crowded under the woods, and 
the third-rate water-power villages sprinkled along 
the brooks, have made up their minds that they too 
must have a talented preacher : only they are not 
always quite clear as to what may be necessary to 
make one. Indeed, they are not as much baffled com- 
monlv in the matter of salvation itself as in finding 
just the minister that is worthy of them. The gen- 
eral refrain is : -Do not our people want as good a 
preacher as anybody ? " And the real wonder often 
felt and sometimes expressed is that our schools, find- 
ing how much a larger supply of Beechers is wanted, 

* Delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society of Andover 
Seminary, at their Anniversary in 1866. 

(182) 



PULPIT TALENT. 183 

do not turn out the number demanded. Nay, there 
is, 1 fear, a silent scolding of Providence that so few 
of them arc born, when the world is overstocked by 
such myriads of men propagated in the common fig- 
ure. The result is, that the young men, looking out 
on the held and preparing for it, are either prodig- 
iously elated in the confidence that they have just the 
talents required, as perhaps they have been told by 
their admiring comrades ; or else that they are miser- 
ably crushed by the discouraging prospect before 
them, because nobody has told them that they have 
any talent at all, and their modesty if not their real 
lack has withheld them from the consciousness of 
ar*. 

Most wretched and pitiful are the hallucinations 
here encountered. These forty hundred or forty 
thousand churches, looking every one after a talented 
preacher, will certainly not get one ; and the few that 
are boasting their success will be discovering almost 
certaiidy, after a while, that they have been a little 
mistaken. Almost as certainly the young men, going 
out with so great expectations, will find, a great part 
of them, that they do not catch the popular approval 
after all ; or, if they do, will shortly be obliged to 
discover that they are much closer down to mediocrity 
than they supposed. Meantime, of those who go out 
in a tremor of weakness and discouragement, some 
at least will begin to be set on powerfully by a hid- 
den force they were unconscious of and which did not 
enter into the computations of their friends. And so 



184 PULPIT TALENT. 

it will be shown, both by cases of unexpected failure 
and of equally surprising success, that factors are 
concerned in preaching not commonly included in our 
computations. What I propose, therefore, at the pres- 
ent time is, to discover, if I can, these hidden factors; 
and by that means right our conceptions where they 
seem to falter. And I have a considerable hope that, 
by a certain process, it may be done. 

Attempts are often made in this direction that are 
much more distinctively Christian than what I now 
propose, and so far more genuine ; but which, partly 
for that reason, do not succeed according to theii 
merit. They undertake to show, and do really show, 
that preaching is not grounded in mere talent, but is 
and must forever be a divine gift. No man, they in- 
sist, ever becomes a prophet or a powerful Christian 
preacher in whom this divine gift is wanting. And 
here is the reason, they allege, why so many talented 
preachers come to nothing, and why so many that 
seemed to have little promise at first finally obtain so 
great power and conquer a degree of success so un- 
expected. We generally assent to this kind of argu- 
ment, because it is honorable to religion, and what is 
more, because it coincides with some very plain teach- 
ings of Scripture. But the difficulty is that the truth 
asserted is too particularly spiritual, and requires too 
much faith to hold us up to it ; therefore, we fall away 
from it shortly and, forgetting ourselves, begin again 
to base our calculations of promise on mere judg- 
ments of natural force ; that is, on the talents as 



PULPIT TALENT. 185 

forces. What I propose therefore on the present occa- 
sion, is to follow the bad method myself; to subside 
into just this plane of unbelief or non-belief, and show 
that, resting, as we so perversely do, all promise for 
the pulpit on mere computations of personal talent, 
we still need a complete revision commonly of our 
judgments, because of the very insufficient conceptions 
we have of the pulpit talents themselves. I shall 
make out, if 1 am successful, a larger inventory of 
the talents, and one that more sufficiently measures 
the personal momenta necessary to success. 

As we commonly speak, it takes just four talents 
to make a great preacher ; namely. — a talent of high 
scholarship ; a metaphysical and theologic thinking 
talent : style or a talent for expression : and a talent 
of manner and voice for speaking. In these four 
talents the young men of the schools commonly settle 
their comparisons, and graduate their prognostications 
of success. The people too. so far as they think any 
thing definitely in the matter, have no doubt that 
these four things will make up the man they are to 
seek. We may therefore call these four the canonical 
talents, for they certainly have that kind of pre- 
eminence. 

Now, about the real importance of these four there 
is little room to doubt, and the high opinion held of 
them already makes it unnecessary to raise an argu- 
ment for them. Our seminaries of learning lay their 
>s on these, and exist in no small degree for the 



186 PULPIT TALENT. 

culture of these ; for these four, it happens, are the 
specially cultivatable talents. And so much being 
expended on them naturally induces a comparative 
over-valuation, which makes it necessary to pass them 
under review, if we are to get the scale of our inven- 
tory settled to a right adjustment. 

It is very clear then, first of all, that a dolt in 
scholarship is not likely to become a great preacher. 
And it is about equally clear that one may be an easy, 
rapid learner, in the sense of acquisition, and be 
really nobody. Sometimes it will be found that a 
scholar preacher, who is partly somebody, will even 
kill a tolerable sermon by letting his scholarship into 
it. And then again it will sometimes be found that 
a preacher, who is only not a scholar because lie has 
never had the opportunity to be, will unfold the very 
highest preaching power in the field of mere practice, 
as we see by some noble examples among the great 
preachers of Methodism. Still even such, if we can- 
not speak of their scholarship, will be as far as possi- 
ble from the state of ignorance. Meantime, if it be 
not true, as it certainly is not, that the preachers 
from a given school will be graduated in their preach- 
ing merit and power by the amount of their learning, 
it must not be understood that we have in such a fact 
any derogation from the value of learning. In such 
an age as this, we must have a proportion at least of 
learned men in the cause of religion. Indeed, every 
preacher wants, in a certain view, if it could be so, to 



P U L IM T TALENT. 187 

know very nearly every thing. And yet let him not 
mistake. Hooks are not every thing by a great deal. 
It is even one of the sad things about book-learning 
that it so easily beeomes a limitation upon souls, and 
a kind of dry rot in their vigor. The receptive fac- 
ulty absorbs the generative, and the scholarhood sucks 
up the manhood. An oak that should undertake to 
be a sponge would not long be mucli of an oak. I 
know not how to put this matter of scholarship better 
than to say that it needs to be universal ; to be out in 
God's universe, that is, to see, and study, and know 
every thing, books and men and the whole work of 
God from the stars downward ; to have a sharp observa- 
tion of war, and peace, and trade, — of animals, and 
trees, and atoms, — of the weather, and the evanescent 
smells of the creations ; to have bored into society in 
all its grades and meanings, its manners, passions, 
prejudices, and times ; so that, as the study goes on, 
the soul will be getting full of laws, images, analogies, 
and facts, and drawing out all subtlest threads of im- 
port to be its interpreters when the preaching work 
requires. Of what use is it to know the German 
when we do not know the human ? Or to know the 
Hebrew points when we do not know at all the points 
of our wonderfully punctuated humanity ? A preacher 
wants a full store-house of such learning, and then 
he wants the contents all shut in, so that they can 
never one of them get out, only as they leap out un- 
bidden to help him and be a language for him. it 
should even be as if he had a sky-full of helpers 



188 PULPIT TALENT. 

thronging to his aid when they are not sent for, and 
endowing him with ministrations of power when they 
do not show their faces. As far as the preacher is 
concerned, this large, free kind of scholarship is the 
only kind that will do him much good. 

The metaphysical and theologic thinking talent has 
a deeper and more positive vigor. There cannot be 
much preaching worthy of the name where there is no 
thinking. Preaching is nothing but the bursting out 
of light, which has first burst in or up from where 
God is, among the soul's foundations. And to this 
end, great and heavy discipline is wanted, that the 
soul may be drilled into orderly right Avorking. And 
yet a merely cold, scientific thinking is vicious. The 
method of preaching is not the scientific method. 
The true thinking here is the original insight of 
premises or first things, and not the building of cob- 
house structures round them. An immense overdo- 
ing in the way of analysis often kills a sermon, if it 
does not quite kill the preacher. Death itself is a 
great analyzer, and nothing ever comes out of the 
analyzing process fully alive. There is a great deal 
of anatomizing thought, but it is the weakest, cheap- 
est kind of thought that flesh is heir to. The formu- 
lizing kind of thought is but a little better. True 
preaching struggles right away from formula, back 
into fact, and life, and the revelation of God and 
heaven. It is a flaming out from God ; it reproves, 
testifies, calls, promises ; thinking always of the an- 
gels going up to report progress, not of the answers 



PULPIT TALENT. 189 

formulated for n catechism. I make no objection to 
formulas : they are good enough in their place, and a 
certain instinci of our nature is comforted in having 
sonic articulations of results thought out to which our 
minds may refer. Formulas are the jerked meat of 
salvation, — if not always the strong meat, as many 
try to think, — dry and portable and good to keep, and 
when duly seethed and softened, and served with need- 
ful condiments, just possible to be eaten ; but for the 
matter of living, we really want something fresher 
and more nutritious. On the whole, the kind of 
thinking talent wanted for a great preacher is that 
which piercingly loves ; that which looks into things 
and through them, plowing up pearls and ores, and 
now and then a diamond. It will not seem to go on 
metaphysically, or scientifically, but with a certain 
round-about sense and vigor. And the people will be 
gathered to it because there is a gospel fire burning in 
it that warms them to a glow. This is power. 

The rhetorical talent or talent of style is a very 
great gift, and one that can be largely cultivated. But 
the ambition of style, or the consciousness of it, does 
not always need to be. Neither is it always any great 
sign for a preacher that he shows a considerable lux- 
ury in this kind of excellence. About the weakest, 
falsest kind of merit, and most opposite to good 
preaching, is the studied, common-place -book style. 
A great many preachers die of style, that is, of trying 
to soar; when, if they would only consent to go afoot 
as their ideas do, they might succeed and live. Sophist 



190 PULPIT TALENT. 

and rhetorician were very nearly synonymous in the 
classic days ; for they had the same trade then of 
taking men by a seeming, or a pretentious lie, as now. 
The preacher wants of course to know his mother 
tongue, and have a clear, correct, and forcible way of 
expression in it. And then, if he has really some- 
thing strong enough to say, to call in angels of im- 
agery that excel in strength to help him say it, there 
is no kind of symbol observed by him, in heaven 
above, or in the earth beneath, that will not be at 
hand to lend him wings and lift him into the neces- 
sary heights of expression. But the moment these 
aerial creatures begin to see that they are wanted for 
garnish, and not for truth's sake, they will hide like 
partridges in the bush. To get up grand expressions 
in the manner of some, and then go a hunting after 
only weak ideas to put into them, is the very absurd- 
est and wickedest violation possible of the second 
commandment. No man has a right to say any 
beautiful or powerful thing till he gets some thoughts 
beautiful and powerful enough to require it. Only 
good and great matter makes a good and great style. 
It is not difficult for power to be strong, or for any 
real fire to burn. But mere rhetorical fire will neither 
shake nor burn any thing. And just here it is that 
the prodigious promise of so many young men is over- 
estimated. Could they only understand how great a 
thing in style is honesty, simple, self-forgetting hon- 
esty, their would-be fine, or fanciful, or sublime would 
fall away, and they would finally rise just as much 



PULPIT TALENT. 191 

higher, even in stylo, as the cast-off trumpery of their 
affectations and laborious inanities permits them to 
rise. Simple modesty, earnest conviction, — what a 
Lifting of the doom of impotence would they be to 
many ! 

What is called the speaking talent is often miscon- 
ceived in the same way. It is mostly a natural talent, 
though it can be modulated and chastened by criti- 
cism. But the difficulty is, that such kind of disci- 
pline has tc be commonly dispensed, before the sub- 
ject is sufficiently advanced in age and maturity of 
perception to have any thing on hand that is at all 
worthy of a manner, or indeed even possible for it. 
How can he fitly speak sentiments before he has them 
and knows the weight of them ? If he takes the 
boards in a declamation, astonishing everybody by the 
wondrous figure he makes, and compelling his audi- 
tors to imagine what a preacher he is destined to be, 
it is more likely by far that he is destined to be a 
very indifferent speaker in the humblest type of 
mediocrity. I have never known a great college de- 
claimer that became a remarkable preacher ; but I 
have known them that could only stammer and saw, 
and tilt up their rising inflections to the general pity 
of their audience, who became natural at once when 
they began to speak their own sentiments, and ob- 
tained great power in delivery. Meantime, this special 
fact in preaching is not always remembered, that the 
artistic air kills every thing. The discovery of art is 
very nearly fatal everywhere, and is never in fit place 



192 PULPIT TALENT. 

save when it garnishes temptation, — to make the devil 
weaker than he would be. The absurdest thing ever 
believed by mankind is the story of Demosthenes and 
his pebbles : first, because it made such a hard time 
for his mouth ; and second, because it made such a 
hard time for the pebbles ; and third, because it made 
even a harder time for the sea that was obliged to 
hear such mouthings. All the worse if a speaker so 
trained gets to be absolutely faultless ; for that is 
about the greatest fault possible. I have heard 
preaching more than once, that became first wearisome, 
then shortly disgusting, for the simple reason that the 
manner was so perfectly shaped by skill and self-regu- 
lation. After such an exhibition, it is even refreshing 
to imagine the great " babbler " at Athens, jerking 
out his grand periods, and stammering his thunder in 
a way so uncouth as to be even a little comtemptible 
to himself. He at least meant what he said, and 
because he did, was able to bring himself out in 
respect at the close. In just the same way, there are 
many young men who are thought to have no speaking 
talent, and are greatly depressed themselves because 
they have none, some of whom may yet become 
preachers of Christ in the highest rank of power and 
genuine eloquence. 

We find then, as a result of this review, that the 
four canonical talents, always valuable, are yet certain, 
many times, to be no true signs of success. A man 
may be a scholar and yet no preacher ; he may 
be a tough thinker and great metaphysician and yet 



PULPIT TALENT. 193 

no preacher; gifted in style, or thought to be, and yel 
no preacher; an accomplished and fine speaker and 

yci no preacher. Whence it also follows, that he may 
be all four, and yet no preacher. All auguries there- 
fore from them are found every day to miscarry. In 
which we perceive beforehand, that there must be 
other talents lurking somewhere that require to be 
brought into the computation. 

I shall name accordingly as many as six or seven 
others, three of which are more or less necessary to 
all kinds of speaking, though more nearly indispensa- 
ble in preaching ; and three that are preeminently 
preaching talents, in distinction from all others ; to- 
gether with a fourth that only works indirectly. 

In the former class then, first of all, I name what 
may be called the talent for growth. Some men 
never grow. They grew, and that was the end of it. 
They excelled in the school, and gave the highest 
promise in their first effort at preaching. But they 
are soon at their limit, which limit they will never 
pass. Xo matter how great their industry and fidelity, 
they will never advance upon themselves ; and if you 
wait for them to come on, the strange thing will be 
that they do not come an inch. They appear to have 
all the talents, and have them in full order, but some- 
how the law of increment is wanting. Their capital is 
good enough, but it is invested so as to gather no per 
cent, of interest money. It is as if their mind grew 
dimensionally with their body, and stopped when the 



194 PULPIT TALENT. 

vegetative principle of that came to its limit. Now 
there is another kind of souls that mature more 
slowly and under a different law. Increment is their 
destiny. Their force makes force. What they gather 
seems to enlarge their very brain. Nobody thought 
of them at first as having much promise. Their 
faculty was thin and slow. They were put down 
among the mediocrities. But while the other class are 
flagstaff s only, these are real trees, going to create 
themselves like trees by a kind of predestined incre- 
ment. By and by it begins to be seen that they move. 
Somebody finally speaks of them. Their sentiments 
are growing bigger, their opinions are getting weight, 
ideas are breaking in and imaginations breaking out, 
and the internal style of their souls, thus lifted, lifts 
the style of their expression. They at length get the 
sense of position, and then a certain majesty of con- 
sciousness adds weight to their speech. And finally 
the wonderful thing about them is that they keep on 
growing, confounding all expectation, getting all the 
while more breadth and richness, and covering in their 
life, even to its close, with a certain evergreen fresh- 
ness that is admirable and beautiful to behold. 

Now it makes little difference whether we refer this 
faculty of improvableness, this wonderfully cumulative 
property, to a talent of growth in all the talents, or to 
some function of endowment that is more general. 
That some persons have the distinction is indisputa- 
ble. The other class who are deficient in it will work 
as hard and strain their application to as high a key, 



PULPIT TALENT. i'.).> 

and yet they will not grow in the process, any more 
than a violin thai has been thumbed, and sawed, and 
kept throbbing with a body lull of sound for a hun- 
dred years. If wo ask why it is that such application 
misses the natural terms of reward, it may be that 
they have sometimes overstrained their powers ; or it 
may be that they work too much in the line of schol- 
arhood and only get their souls incrustcd by the mere 
cliency of their habit; even as the egg, that was 
growing briskly in its first free state, enlarges never 
by a line after it has found maturity in a shell. Or it 
may be that they get over-conservative, which is the 
same thing as secreting a shell, and then, even as the 
egg may keep up a prodigious conatus of vitality 
within, making no advance in dimensions, so their in- 
dustry creates no movement of growth. 

If then, we are to guess what amount of promise 
there may be in any body of young men who are going 
forth to assert themselves in the ways of speech and 
public influence, it is very important to know who has 
and who has not the talent of protracted unprovability ; 
who can wax mighty and weighty by the longest pull 
of increment, for that is even a kind of genius. No- 
where else, save in the matter of genius, are mankind 
distinguished as widely as here ; and the distinction is 
one that specially concerns every preacher, in the fact 
that he is obliged to stay by his place, and keep on in 
his work, and provide his own subjects, and set his 
people on by a correspondent growth in themselves. 



196 PULPIT TALENT. 

I name again, as another talent which greatly con- 
cerns all public speaking and more especially preach- 
ing, because this latter requires to be more piercing 
and carry its effects on larger assemblies, what may 
be called the individualizing power. At this point 
there is a very great difference in the personality 
function of men ; a difference great enough to be 
designated as a talent. One will go before an audi- 
ence and see nobody in particular in it. He will give 
them forth a really grand sermon, it may be, with as 
little aim, or particularity of aim, as a gunner firing 
into Charleston five miles off. If any soul in the as- 
sembly is hit, it is only because the general aim had 
that chance in it. His eye did not preach, but only 
his tongue ; whereas the eye-bolts of a great preacher 
may be swifter, more piercing, and in better aim than 
those of the tongue. Mere tongue-speaking, in this 
view, is pointless. It will do in the senate. It will 
possibly do at the polls. It is more deficient at the 
bar, where every juryman needs to imagine that he is 
particularly looked after. In preaching, the deficiency 
is almost fatal. I have in mind, when I speak in this 
manner, a certain preacher who was conspicuous only 
because he was effective, and was effective only be- 
cause of the wonderfully distributive power of his ad- 
dress, not because of any remarkable merit in the 
style, or thought, or substance of his sermon. That 
keen, gray, individualizing eye, — it was shooting 
everywhere, into every body. Xot five minutes passed 
before every person in the assembly began to feel that 



PULPIT TALENT. 197 

the preacher's two six-shooters were leveled directly 
at him. Generalities were soon gone by, and the 
dealing was become a very personal matter. So by 
this one talent of individualizing, which perhaps was 
never called a talent, and without any other of much 
note, he became wonderfully effective. 

Xow let any man try to command this sort of power 
who is indeterminate and vague in his habit and with- 
out eyes, and he will soon begin to show how much of 
a talent it may be. His very stare will be as if he 
were looking after a vacuum. His eyebolts will not 
fly point-blank, but only whirl about giddily like the 
wheels of a fire-work machinery. Or, if he tries to set 
his gaze and be a presence to every body, the drowsy 
opiate of his eyes, thus fixed, will not unlikely shut 
the eyes of every body. 

This remarkable, but not over-admired talent has 
another use ; namely, that, while other talents are 
talents of supply, this is the talent of economic dis- 
tribution. To forge out masses of truth heavy enough 
and wide enough in their range to sway whole audi- 
ences, and continue to do it, week by week, and year 
by year, requires a vast generative power such as few 
men possess. But with more particularity of aim, a 
much smaller expenditure will answer ; even as a 
gimlet will do good service in worming its particular 
hole, or many thousand holes, when, if it should 
undertake to emulate the scope of the maelstrom, it 
would hardly fill so large a figure. Xow and then a 
man has capital enough for wholesale preaching, but 



19S PULPIT TALENT. 

the particular manner of a retail delivery, both in 
preaching and trade, is far more apt to succeed, and 
the success to be more real and reliable. Hence also 
it is that a great many young men die out in their 
generalities and huge, overgrown subjects, and a great 
many others who appear to be meagre and want cali- 
ber, going to work in this hopeful way of economy, 
will even preach better possibly, and more effectively, 
than if they were more profusely endowed. They 
will at least be saved from the folly of trying to do 
something so great in the general as to do nothing at 
all in particular. 

1 name again as a talent of immense consequence in 
all kinds of address, and especially in preaching, what 
we may designate as having a soul, or as we some- 
,5 times say, a great soul. Now that one may have all 
the talents we have named, including the four, and 
yet have but a very small soul, or no soul at all, is 
understood, or ought to be, by every body. His mo- 
tivities may be visibly selfish, his judgments may be 
weak, his impulse small, his action fussy and dry, his 
resentments petty, his jealousies contemptible, his 
prejudices shallow and pitiful, and the whole cast 
of his nature mean. His character, even though it be 
Christian as to principle, may be still uncomfortable 
to himself, and wearisome or disgustful to others. 
How can such a man, scholar and thinker though he 
be, perfectly artistic in style and delivery, carry any 
great effect in assemblies ? How, above all, can he 



PULPIT TALENT. 100 

fitly represent a gospel ? On the other hand, a man 
who is not as high in these gifts of promise as he 
might be, but has a really great soul, — how often will 
his mere felt quantity and weight of being give him a 
considerable, or even a mighty, preaching power! 
We call him, for example, a manly person; and 
though there is just now an immensity of gas vented 
in the word, we are still not so totally sick of it as to 
be insensible to the very great dignity of manliness. 
Paul, for example, had other high merits, but withal 
lie had this in a most signal degree. Courage, for 
instance, is one of the grandest elements of magnan- 
imity, and his courage was perfect ; able to dare any 
thing, prudent enough to dare nothing foolishly. In 
the same way, his independence was at once complete, 
and centralized in order as equably as the solar system. 
His opinions were leveled by reason, clean above the 
reach of conceit. His serenity was clear as the sky. 
His half deific love put him above resentments. His 
deep fellow-nature put him in the lot of others, apart 
from all considerations of merit, or even of personal 
wrongs to himself. And he had withal a sense of 
self-respect so profound, that no indignity, stoning, 
whipping, mocking, spitting, chains, could humble, or 
bring down his manly consciousness, any more than 
if he had been the angel in the sun. Doubtless he 
was borne up into this transcendent dignity and su}>- 
ported in it, partly by the inspirations of God in his 
life, but every one can see that he had a naturally 
great soul. And the soulhood of his action corres 



200 PULPIT TALENT. 

ponded. When we are most consciously in his power, 
we hardly know whether it is the spirituality or the 
manliness of his doctrine that most impresses us. I 
think it likely that among the Jewish scholars and 
thinkers of Germany there are some, in every gener- 
ation, who are really superior to him as such, and 
yet there is a quantity of soul, or great manhood in 
him, that makes them all, from Spinoza downward, 
little more than trivialities in comparison. 

Passing now to the class of talents that are most 
preeminently preaching talents and not specially 
required in the other kinds of speech, I name, first 
among the three, the talent of a great conscience or 
a firmly accentuated moral nature. A man may, 
plainly enough, be a great scholar, metaphysician, rhet- 
orician, speaker in the artistic way, and yet have only 
a weak, scarcely pronounced conscience ; and this, to 
many, will pass for nothing, because they are not 
accustomed to think of the conscience as being any 
talent at all. I think otherwise. It is even one of 
the grandest talents of human nature ; that which 
gives it a reverberative quality, as by some tremendous 
gong of conviction quivering in its chambers. No 
great and high authority is possible in a movement on 
souls, without a great conscience. Principles analyt- 
ically distinguished and reasoned by the understanding 
have a tame weak accent as respects authority, but 
when they are issued from the conscience, rung as 
peals by the conscience, they get an attribute of 



PULPIT TALENT. 201 

thunder. Like thunder too, they are asserted bj 
their own mere utterance and the unquestionable 
authority of their voice. 

Now it is not denied that all men, taken as being 
simply men. have consciences : they would not be 
men without consciences. But there is a very great 
difference in the degrees of consciences and the kind 
of timber they are made of. Some consciences seem 
to be wholly insignificant and weak till they are tem- 
pest-strung, or get mounted somehow on the back of 
passion. Then there is no hydrophobia so incurably 
mad ; and there is in fact no human creature so 
thoroughly wicked and diabolical, as he that is pro- 
testing in the heat of his will, or the fume of his 
grudges and resentments, how conscientious he is. 
Another kind of conscience appears to be felt mainly 
as an irritant. It pricks and nettles, but does not 
very much sway even the subject himself. It is sharp, 
pungent, thin, bnt never kingly ; felt only as a sliver 
or a wasp in the hair. There is also a slimy, would-be 
tender, slow-moving conscience, that draws itself in 
viscous softness like a snail upon a limb, till, presto, 
the conscientious slime hardens into a shell, and what 
seemed an almost skinless sensibility becomes a horny 
casement of impracticability, obstinacy, or bigot stiff- 
ness. Xow these and all such partial, crotchety, and 
misbegotten consciences are insufficient to make a 
powerful preacher. Their diameter is not big enough 
to carry any great projectile of conviction. Xo mat- 
ter what, or how great, his promise on the score of 



202 PULPIT TALENT. 

his other gifts and acquirements, he cannot be impres* 
sive because there is no ring of authority in his moral 
nature. He wants a lofty and large moral configura- 
tion, a conscience astronomically timed and steady in 
its wide orbit as are the stars in heaven's original 
order. Wanting in this he only sputters before con- 
viction ; his vehemence is only felt as annoyance, his 
brilliancy as the glitter of tinsel, and his great think- 
ing as a merely puerile, nerveless intellectuality. He 
can hold a place at the bar, he can win golden opin- 
ions in the senate, and even attain high rank as an 
orator in all kinds of ornamental, political, and 
humanly social kinds of speaking ; but without a 
grand reverberative moral nature, towering as a kind 
of Sinai thunder-capped in his soul, he can not be a 
successful preacher. 

Again, there needs to be in every powerful preacher 
y. a large faith-talent. I do not say, you will observe, 
a large faith, but a large faith-talent ; for if there is 
to be a large faith, there must also be a large faith- 
talent back of it, in which respect there is a very 
great difference among men. Some souls have natu- 
rally broad, high windows opening God-ward ; and 
some have only little seams or chinks letting in just 
enough true light to make them religious beings, 
capable of salvation. Some like fires ascending seek 
the sun, and some are punky natures, in which the 
fire only smolders, making true heat, but scarcely 
becoming luminous. These latter will live, as dig- 



PULPIT TALENT. 203 

ciplcs, in a different plane ; prudcntially wise, it maj 
be logical ; busied in questions of the understanding ; 
but there is not simple seeing enough in them to make 
great preaching. A large, immediate, and free be- 
holding is necessary to make a powerful preacher. 
A large deduction by the understanding will not do it. 
Some things he may intuit by the reason, and some 
by the moral sense ; some things he may interpret 
and realize by his sympathies ; some he may imagine ; 
some he may climb into by his aspirations. But these 
are all mere functions of nature, included perhaps in 
the faith-talent, but still in themselves not faith. Not 
any one, nor all of them together, can reach the invis 
ible, or put us in the sense of supernatural facts and 
worlds. Faith only, as a talent in nature for a super- 
natural beholding, bridges the gulf and takes us ever 
into the knowledge of what natural premises do not 
contain, and no mere investigation can reach. Faith 
has a way of proving premises themselves, namely, 
by seeing them ; seeing the known centralized in the 
unknown, the visible in the invisible ; substance or 
substantiator thus of things hoped for, evidence of 
things not seen. As I prove the bridge by trusting 
myself to it, so I prove all highest things in religion 
by my faith in them. I get perception thus of God. 
He dawns in my faith as the morning light in my eye. 
So in virtue of the faith-talent, we have the possi- 
bility also of divine inspirations, and of all those ex- 
altations, — visibly divine movements in the soul, — 
that endow and are needed to endow the preacher. 



204 PULPIT TALENT. 

Other speakers do not want such inspirations in their 
common public spheres, but in the preacher they are 
even indispensable. And there is a very great differ- 
ence in men in this respect, as in respect to faith. All 
men are spirit, permeable, that is, by the Spirit of 
God, and able, in virtue of that fact, to be born of the 
Spirit. But the being inspirable enough to barely be 
saved is not the kind of capacity necessary to make a 
great preacher of Christ. There may even be good, 
serviceable men in religion, having a serviceable heat 
not easily exhausted, who have yet no tinder-stock, or 
infusion of naphtha mixed with their clay, to throw 
them up ever into flame. They are anthracites all, 
going by faith principally in the sense that they trust 
the calculations of their understanding ; wise in coun- 
cil, it may be, good for the composing of difficulties 
and the planning of solid adjustments, and having an 
immense value often as ballasting for the ship. But 
as ballast is good for nothing above water-line, and 
nobody can make sails of ballast, so these heavy 
natures cannot preach in avoirdupois, or do anything 
in a way of propulsion. 

Neither is the case very much better where the tem- 
perament rushes one directly by faith into great vehe- 
mence and passion. This kind of nature is often less 
inspirable even than the other. The zeal of the flesh 
is too hot for the quiet zeal of faith. Nobody expects 
either steam or lightning to be inspired. Such cannot 
have a call of God, because they cannot stay for it. 
Speaking in the vehemence of steam, there will be no 



PULPIT TALENT. 205 

accent of divinity in what they say; Imt they will be 
very much like those hideously sonorous throats of 
iron, that publish a call every morning in the suburbs 
of our cities, which is most perceptibly not divine. 

Now there is nothing more evident than that one 
may have all the four canonical talents in great prom- 
ise, and yet have almost no faith-talent with them, no 
inspiration, no capacity of any. Examples of the 
kind are even common. The nature they have is 
either a nature too impetuous, or too close, to let any 
divine movement have play in it. The preacher must 
be a very different kind of man ; one who can be uni- 
fied with God by his faith, and go into preaching not 
as a calling but a call ; one who can do more than get 
up notions about God, and preach the notions ; one 
who knows God as he knows his friend, and by close- 
ness of insight gets a Christly meaning in his look, a 
divine quality in his voice, action visibly swayed by 
unknown impulse, imaginations that are apocalyptic, 
beauty of feeling not earthly, authority flavored by 
heavenly sanctity and sweetness, argument that 
breaks out in flame, asserting new premises and ferti- 
lizing old ones more by what is put into them than 
by what is deduced from them. Such a man can be 
God's prophet ; that is to say, he can preach. 

In this view it is important to add that many per- 
sons having this high talent will not, or may not, for 
a long time, know it. The inspiration must be devel- 
oped before either they or others are apprised of the 
capability. Hence it is almost never included, when 



206 PULPIT TALENT. 

we make up our account of this or that man's talent 
for the pulpit. For aught that appears, the candidate 
may be a Savonarola, a Bunyan, or a Whitefield, but 
we have no conception of the fact, and never can have, 
till the inspiration takes him, and his quality is re- 
vealed. Not even Luther was any so prodigiously 
gifted person till he broke into God's liberty, and by 
faith became his prophet. And then a great part of 
his sublimity lay in that awful robustness of nature 
that could be so tremendously kindled by God's inspi- 
rations, burning on, still on, in a grand volcanic con- 
flagration of faculty, yet never consumed. 

There is yet another talent to be set in our inven- 
tory, the reality and real supereminence of which I 
do not doubt, but which still I know not how to name 
or describe as exactly as I could wish. Man is a nature 
none the less profoundly mysterious to us because we 
are men ourselves, and this is the preeminently mys- 
terious talent. It is what our language began, ages 
ago, to call a man's air, and which now, since that 
figure has been spoiled by resolving the felt impres- 
sion of airs into mere external manner and carriage, 
we are trying to call a man's atmosphere, regarding it 
as the mysterious efflux, exhalation, aerial develop- 
ment of his personality. 

We appear to have some reference in the word to 
the fact that natural substances or bodies throw off 
emanations that represent their quality, and create a 
circumambiency, or sphere of aroma about them. 



PULPIT TALENT. 207 

Not all bodies do it ; rocks, ice-cakes, autumnal flowers, 
have no such talent of aroma. Some bodies, again, 
make a bad atmosphere, and some a good, the former 
s affecting us disgustfully, the latter attractively. 
These latter, too, will be in all degrees of power and 
di ffusive capacity. The violets will breath their aroma 
modestly and make a tiny atmosphere. The mignon- 
nette and the sandal-wood will throw themselves out 
farther and fill a wider circle. The orange-tree, or the 
forest of bay, will spread its welcome sphere far out 
at sea, flavoring whole leagues by its breath. We 
must not omit also to observe that these atmospheres 
of objects, whether good or bad, have an almost abso- 
lute power. It is not for us to choose whether we will 
be affected by them or not ; for they have us at a 
great advantage, and will do the disgusting or the 
attractive upon us very much at their will. 

It is remarkable how far this analogy holds respect- 
ing men. A certain class, otherwise highly gifted 
and qualified by the finest accomplishments, make no 
atmosphere any more than a stone or an egg. You 
have their totality in what your eye or ear takes in, 
and they never make you think of any mysterious, 
unknown quality that inspheres them and flavors them 
to your feeling. What success these autumn-born 
souls will have in preaching it is not difficult to see ; 
and here it is that we get our solution of those 
thousand and one cases of failure, where there seemed 
beforehand to be so much of merit and of genuine 
promise. Xo matter what amount of merit one may 



B08 PULPIT TALENT. 

have, whether in himself or in his sermon, if he does 
not make an atmosphere he is nothing. 

Much worse and more hopeless is the candidacy 
that makes only a bad or disagreeable atmosphere. 
Thus yon will sometimes enter a room, where yon 
encounter a stranger, and the moment your eyes fall 
upon him a kind of revulsion seizes you. You can- 
not tell why : he is not badly dressed, does not ap- 
pear to : . ' is, has no particular features that are 
bad enough to be remarkable : yet he fills you some- 
how with uneasiness and an inexpressible dread. 
Sometimes there will be a forward man in a church. 
who, without doing anything specially bad. and even 
contributing much to its advancement, will yet finally 
quite kill it by his oppressive, suffocating atmosphere. 
Imagine now some person such as these, or only less 
disagreeable, appearing before an audience to assume 
the preaching office. His studies are completed, not 
without honor, and his Christian repute is clear of 
scandal. He fails utterly, and many cannot account 
for it. It was as if he had run upon some prejudice : 
and it was true, because he raised a prejudice at once 
against himself. Somehow there is a revulsion, but 
nobody charges the revulsion to any particular offense 
in his look or manner. Probably nothing more defi- 
nite was thought than that he was somehow disagree- 
able. For. — alas that we must say it ! some very 
pious people are yet very disagreeable. It is not 
use their piety does not do what it can to create 
a favorable atmosphere of impression for them, but 



PULPIT TALENT. 

that it is not strong enough as yet to master the 
repulsive, pitifully bad atmosphere of their natural 
character. 

Again, there are some of the good atmospheres, or 
such as are not bad, which are disqualifications in the 
preacher. One carries about with him, for example, 
the inevitable literary atmosphere, and a shower-bath 
on his audience could not more effectually kill the 
sermon. Another preaches out of a scientific atmos- 
phere, which is scarcely better ; another out of a 
philosophic, which is even worse ; for no human soul 
is going either to be pierced for sin, or to repent of 
it, scientifically ; and as little is any one going to be- 
lieve, or hope, or walk with God, or be a little child, 
philosophically. Xo man ever becomes a really great 
preacher who has not the talent of a right and gen- 
uinely Christian atmosphere. 

Now what we mean, as in strict scientific concep- 
tion, by this matter of an atmosphere, I will not over- 
positively say. If we call it the moral aroma of char- 
acter, or if we call it the magnetic sphere of the 
person, we only change the figure, but do not resolve 
the fact. Perhaps we make a little advance if we 
ascribe the fact to the expression of the person ; that 
is, to the voice, color, feature, manner, and general 
soul-play represented in them ; still we can never tell 
precisely what and where the expression is. If it is 
imagined or objected that what we are calling an 
atmosphere is in fact only the same thing over again 
that we have called an inspiration, that can at most 



210 , PULPIT TALENT. 

be true only in part ; for we feel it consciously as 
being something which is natural endowment in the per- 
son, and belongs, at least in part, to the spiritual 
frojprium of his personal habit and quality. 

After all, we only seem to know that the person 
having a good or bad atmosphere plays himself, some- 
how, or by some subtle talent, into others, by and 
through their imagination ; whereupon they conceive 
him with a halo, an air, an atmosphere about him. 
He raises great imaginations in souls, and by these, 
blazing as a flame-element in them, — not in him, but 
in themselves, — they are made to see in him a flame, 
a glory, a kind of circumambient quality, more diffu- 
sive than his person ; so he inspheres, and so indomi- 
nates. ^No great power is ever felt in mankind which 
does not take them by their imagination ; and this, 
at bottom, is what we mean by a man's atmosphere. /' 
Hence the fact that no great commander is extem- 
porized or provided ready-made. He must have time 
to work imaginations into play and make his atmos- 
phere. By his victories he must spread the horizon 
of his life and authority, till he takes in senates and 
states and legions trailing on to the fight, and be- 
comes a one-man circumambiency, vast enough to fill, 
if I may so speak, the solar spaces above and wide 
geographic spaces below, as between the Mississippi 
and the sea, dominating as by spell in the thousands 
of commanders, setting fast the courage, steadying 
the wheel, lifting the tramp of their columns, pour- 
ing them down into rivers and over into fortresses, 



PULPIT TALENT. 211 

and on through vast regions of swamp and forest, 
harnessed all to him, a thousand miles away, and 
campaigning for him in the punctual order of the sun. 
In this manner, having gotten hold of imaginations 
enough, and become an atmosphere of dominating 
sway vast enough, behold the great general is born ! 
So grand a thing, in the scale of it, is the gestation 
process by which an atmosphere is sometimes created. 

All great preachers get their power, in the long 
run, by a similar process. 'The gift is partly natural, 
as being a great soul gift, and for the rest, is a great 
soul development in and through and upon the im- 
aginative sense of other souls. In that manner the 
greatest, highest, most necessary of all preaching 
endowments, — who of us shall have it ? f Ah ! this \ 
question of preaching : it is nothing, I may almost 
say, but the question of an atmosphere. /Academic 
attainments, standing, talents, are valuable, but the 
possibility of a grand high atmosphere signifies more_ 1 y 

Enter the great assembly, for example, where young 
Summerfield is giving his call and testimony, and 
there is a power upon you which it is the highest 
luxury and dearest blessing of the earth to feel. You 
know not where it is, but clearly it is not in the words 
spoken. There is a something about the man which 
(ills you with a sense of mystery. There is incense 
here and the smell of sacrifice. The man is nothing, 
and his atmosphere every thing. It fills the whole 
concavity, from the rafters downward to the floor ; 
nay, it presses the walls and issues from the doors. 



212 PULPIT TALENT. 

To be there, insphered in the sacred aroma of that 
pure soul, is a kind of converting ordinance, apart 
from all power of words. 

,/The example of Dr. Channing is different, but sin- 
gularly impressive. TTe look in vain for any highest 
force in his sermons. To be frank, they do not seem 
to really preach at all, as being God's calls to faith 
and salvation by the cross of his Son. They are 
ethically conceived, and not evangelically. If we talk 
of argument, they are honest and faithful, but not 
specially robust. Where then was the power ? For 
there certainly was a most grandly impressive power 
in his pulpit efforts. It consisted, I conceive, to a 
very great extent, in his personal atmosphere. -No 
one could argue witji him, because every one was 
obliged to feel hini./ The subdued manner, the keen- 
edged, quivering delicacy of his moral perceptions, 
the unqualified honesty of the man, sanctified by his 
profoundly tender, always delicate reverence toward 
God, made the atmosphere of the place sensational, 
and no one was permitted to choose whether he would 
be impressed or notj 

And what shall we imagine concerning the personal 
atmosphere of that wonderful being who spake as 
never man spake ? It was not his look, nor his 
declamation, nor his fine periods ; it was not even his 
prodigious weight of matter ; but it was the sacred 
exhalation of his quality, the aroma, the auroral glory 
of his person : this it was that quelled the marshal 
and his posse, and sent them back to make return, not 



TULPIT TALENT. 213 

that he could not be found, but that he was too great 
and awe-inspiring to allow the touch of their hands ! 
And here, let us dare to say it, were, in a certain high- 
est view, the significance and glory of his life. /He 
took the human person to exhale an atmosphere of 
God that should fill, and finally renew, the creation, 
bathing all climes and time* and ages with its date- 
less, ineradicable power ; j>o that, having made even 
the world sensational from that time forth, he could 
say, with a confidence how beautifully modest and 
true : " I have glorified thee on the earth." 

Xow, this particular talent, above all others, we 
must note, is the special condition of pulpit excel- 
lence. Much will often be accomplished in the sen 
ate by a speaker whose personal atmosphere is for- 
bidding or repulsive. One of the most powerful 
advocates we have ever had at the bar was a man 
whose air was brutal enough and low enough in 
depravity, I may almost say, to raise a smell of dis- 
gust. The poet Young has conquered somehow a 
position of eminence, in spite of the really disagree- 
able atmosphere of his mock sententious declamations. 
Byron had two atmospheres, — a naturally noble and 
high, and a morally low and repulsive. The same 
was partly true of Burns. And they both obtain, it 
may be, even the greater power that they carry an 
atmosphere so interestingly bad. The talent, in short, 
of a good, great atmosphere, is nowhere else a neces- 
sity so nearly absolute as in preaching. Only here it 
needs to be observed, lest one fall into mistake, that 



214 PULPIT TALENT. 

sometimes a man will be found to have really the 
finer and more potent atmosphere, just because at 
first he seems to have none at all ; that is, because he 
is so crisp and clear as not, for the time, to put us 
thinking of any thing but his crystal voice and his very 
naked words. The prophets, for example, were the 
old time preachers, and Isaiah had the atmosphere of 
June ; and Jeremiah the tearful, tender, glittering 
softness of April Then comes Ezekiel ; and we 
think he is mere January. He thumps and crepitates 
in his hard, metallic periods, and saying nothing of 
his exhalations, he appears to be rather frosted about, 
even as the auroral giants of the North, galloping 
across their hyperborean icebergs, appear to shimmer 
and quiver in their frozen element of sky ; and yet, 
as the metallic ring of his strange, bare style con- 
tinues, we begin to feel that he is bolting in a state of 
bare conviction, more rigidly firm, more consciously 
indivertible, because it is ( the clear January cold of 
God's truth. | These clear, cold-feeling, bracing at- 
mospheres are many times even more effective, as 
regards certain impressions, than any other which 
may seem to be more nearly aromatic. 

There is yet one other talent which I may not hesi- 
tate to call a preaching talent, though it does not 
relate immediately to success in preaching, but only 
indirectly. When we speak of a talent for preaching, 
and of talented preachers, we must not stop at the 
mere matter of speaking, or of what is spoken, but we 
must also think of an ability to get on, carry on, win 



PULPIT TALENT. 215 

a confidence by success in a cause. Our preacher, 
therefore, is not a mere public speaker, — far from that 
as possible, — but he is to have a capacity of being and 
doing ; an administrative, organizing capacity , a 
power to contrive and lead, and put the saints in work, 
and keep the work aglow, and so to roll up a cause by 
ingatherings and careful incrementations. The sue- 
cess and power of the preacher, considering his fixed 
settlement in a place, will not seldom depend even 
more on a great administrative capacity than it will 
on his preaching. And with good reason, for it really 
takes more high manhood, more wisdom, firmness, 
character, and right-seeing ability, to administer well 
in the cause, than it does to preach well. No matter 
what seeming talent there may be in the preaching, if 
there is no administrative, then the man is a boy, and 
the boy will have a boy's weight, — nothing more. On 
the other hand, being a true man, able to be felt by 
his manly direction, his mediocrity in the sermon will 
be made up by respect for his always right-seeing 
adivity. In this office then of preaching, one of the 
very highest talents demanded is an administrative * 
talent. Every preacher wants it even more than he 
would in the governing of a state ; and yet how many 
of our young preachers rush out on the beginning of 
their work, as if holding the preaching stand on Sun- 
days were to be the test of every thing. This very 
dull matter of administration, — let those who will de- 
scend to it,— is not for them. And the result will be, 
in nine cases out of ten, that nothing is for them, but 



216 PULPIT TALENT. 

a mortifying disappointment and a terrible correction 
of their greenness. Now it happens that a good many 
young men, who have other talents in but a moderate 
degree, could greatly excel in the organizing, admin- 
istrative department, and could so even up the scale 
of faculty as to command great power and influence. 
An advantage so great they cannot afford to lose. On 
the other hand, let any one most gifted turn himself 
away from the work of a bishop at this point, and he 
will assuredly make anything but a successor of the 
apostles. Even Paul himself would have to drop off 
all the honors of his epistles, and would only be that 
mere " babbler," which the Athenians, or that god 
" Mercury," which the stupid Lycaonians took him to 
be. 

There is then, as I now at last conclude, a much 
greater number of talents concerned in the matter of 
preaching than some of us are wont to suppose. The 
canonical forms are not all. The inventory is a large 
one, and might even be much farther extended. But 
my practical object is gained, if I have only been able 
to raise some fit impression of the very great diversi- 
ties of gifts that are related, in as many colors and 
degrees, to the equipment of a successful preacher. It 
does not follow that being short in this or that will be 
fatal, or that being first in many things greatly es- 
teemed is any sure pledge of success. All that we 
can say is, that the generalj^ast of the man must con- 
tain possibilities enougH to make up the needed endow- 



PULPIT TALENT. 217 

nicnt. Some very good candidates will be rated low 
for a time in the scale of promise ; and some will 
be rated high, because of certain attainments and 
tokens, who will finally be discovered to have only the 
meagerest, poorest kind of nature, such as almost 
wants a soul. Meantime the poor distracted people 
are fooling themselves in continual misjudgments, and 
wondering why they are so unfortunate. Their dia- 
mond, after all, is only a big stone. They rushed to 
the post-office, sending out their paper missives all 
over the land, asking for the diamonds, but they drew 
the picture so big that they could only be great bowl- 
ders, and they are surprised to find that the particular 
bowlder they got is no diamond at all ! They did not 
remember that these finest of the gems are the most 
modest in size, and likeliest to be found, when they 
are simple enough to only look after a broom for the 
sweeping of their houses. If then our immense over- 
talk about pulpit talent, or preaching talent, is still to 
go on, let us at least contrive to include something 
more adequate in it than we seen to have been doing 
heretofore. We have too many young men of real 
capacity in points one side of our common canonical 
tests, that we cannot afford to crush, or to have 
crushed in this way ; and the look of nonsense we 
inflict on religion itself, by the feeble impertinence of 
our pulpit ambitions and standards of prognostication, 
can still less be afforded. 

Let me add, as I close, a few words of friendly 



218 PULPIT TALENT. 

advice to the classes most concerned in the illustra 
tions I have presented. It may be that some of you, 
who are already entered on the preaching office, begin 
to suffer many very gloomy misgivings and hard 
rebuffs of discouragement. 

You went forth, months or years ago, it may be, 
in the conceit of your superlative standing, and 
hung your flaunting colors out as challenges of 
your expected victory, and now you begin to feel 
that your talent, after all, is somehow fatally deficient. 
It may be, or it may not. Be not hasty in accepting 
the conclusion. Possibly the mere conceit you suf-. 
fered has blocked your talents hitherto, and when it is 
cured, so that you can take your place in true humility, 
they will come out in a power that even astonishes 
yourself. Conceit is the bane of faith, and where 
there is no faith the possibility of power is barred./ 

Some of you, again, are just now standing at the 
gate and waiting to go forth. Your studies are con- 
cluded, but not with much token of success. Hith- 
erto you have not discovered the talents that appear to 
be indispensable. Your friends do not flatter you, and 
you see not how to flatter yourself. Your heart sinks 
in discouragement. Do not think so meanly of your- 
self that you cannot be yourself. There may be some- 
thing in you that neither you nor your friends have 
discovered ; something that must come out slowly, in j 
a way of holy conflict, and yet will coxae. J Remember 
also, as a law of the talents, that/ any one of them 
waked into power wakes the talent next to it, I 



PULPIT TALENT. 219 

and that in like manner another, till finally the whole 
circle wakes into power, and it thunders all round the 
sky. When the conscience that was only half awake 
is fully roused by the Spirit of God, as, when the time 
arrives, it may be, then the faith-talent leaps out, as 
it were new-born, to seize on the knowledge of God 
and climb into the fullness of his peace. Then comes 
inspiration ; with that, courage. Now the imagination 
is aglow, and hidden forces before unknown burst into 
power. So it was with Luther, so with Chalmers, and 
so proportionally it may be with natures of a humbler 
mold. No man knows what endowments he may have 
unfolded when the fit crisis arrives. Let us then 
heroically hope and patiently wait. Perhaps we shall 
some time find that we have more and better talents 
than we thought. 

""Besides, there is another and holier ground of 
encouragement for us all. Christ, our master, he that 
gives us our message and our call, was himself a com- 
plete man, having all the talents we have named, and 
all others beside, that belong to the ideally perfect 
human mind. What we therefore want is not to go 
hunting our poor nature through, that we may find 
what is slumbering in us waiting to be somehow 
waked. But the grand first thing, or chief concern 
for us is, to be simply Christed all through, filled in 
every faculty and member with his Christly manifes- 
tation, — in that manner to be so interwoven with him 
as to cross fibre and feel throughout the quickening 
contact of his personality ; and then every tiling in us. 



220 PULPIT TALENT. 

no matter what, will be made the most of, because the 
corresponding Christly talent will, be playing divinely 
with it, and charging it with power from himself. 
Xot that, even thus, every one is called to be a great 
preacher, or indeed any preacher at all, but the fact 
that one finds himself able to be thus opened to Christ, 
and gloriously empowered by union with him, very 
nearly amounts to a call, as it does to the needful 
endowment. Be it invalid, or woman, or old man, 
or boy, he must and will be somehow vehicle and tongue 
and gospel for his Master. 



VII 

TRAINING FOE THE PULPIT MANWAKD.* 



Regret is frequently expressed and sometimes won- 
der, that so many preachers, qualified apparently by 
much talent and culture, fail so miserably in getting 
any vital connection with men, or their people. And 
we make short work of the mystery often, by saying 
that they have not nature enough in them to get hold 
of nature in others ; though a better and more true 
solution would be, that they fail of any vital connec- 
tion or power to gain it, because they have no such 
Christian nearness to men or vitalized interest in 
them, as begets a vitally responsive interest. Xobody 
imagines that men will be morally quickened by words 
spoken through a fire-trumpet ; neither will they any 
more, by the words of a man who is equally brassy and 
not more humanly alive. But where there is a soul 
vitalized in feeling, where the look, the action, the 
man, bespeaks a living and true interest in the per- 
sons addressed, they must be somehow less than 
human not to be quickened responsively. When the 

♦Delivered at the Anniversary of the Theological School of 
Chicago.in 1868. 

(221) 



222 TRAINING FOR THE 

true live magnet is thrust into a bag of iron-sand, it 
will come out with innumerable adherents festooning 
round its neck, and clinging fast to it, because it is 
clinging fast to them. But the dead magnet clinging 
to nobody will have nobody clinging to it. 

The failures we lament then must be referrible to 
some lack in the preachers of nearness to, or human- 
ized perception of men. /The manward faculty) is 
somehow undeveloped, or too scantily developed; to 
bring them into their place among men and prepare 
them to act their part effectively. And this very 
practical matter it is that I propose to consider on the 
present occasion ; stating briefly first, the causes of the 
fact ; and then, more carefully, by what kind of train- 
ing and self-exercise the necessary interest in men 
may be duly unfolded and quickened. 

As regards the causes of the fact in question, it 
needs to be somewhere noted, that the unworldly 
position of the preacher, qualified by no specially coun- 
teractive grace, will itself, and often does, separate 
him so far from his fellow- men as to make him a man 
quite one side of life. Hence the abundant satire put 
upon the clergy so called, as being ignorant of men, 
living a dry kind of life, out of contact with the world, 
and practically unqualified for any manly part in the 
going on of human affairs. The lawyer conforms to 
the world and is of it, and the preacher, not allowed 
to be, loses just so much of interest in it, or capacity 
to be a part of it ; unless,, coming down upon it in the 
living charities of heaven, he takes hold thus again of 



PULPIT MAX WARD. 223 

all he has let go, to be wiser and more alive in it than 
ever ; more respected in his judgments and every way 
more vitally felt as a man./ There is a most real dan- 
ire r here, but the remedy it is not difficult to find. 

But the inability we speak of is due, in a different 
way. to a large variety of causes, among which I name, 
first of all, a deficiency in the natural gifts of address. / 
S< >me persons have a wondrous felicity in this respect. 
They have large true sympathies. They fall in 
always, somehow, at the dew-point of favor, and set 
every sensibility a-dripping with the wet of their moist 
kinship and life. They are beautifully considerate, 
therefore considered. They confide and are con- 
fided in. They are friendly and make friends. 
Such persons have a great natural advantage in 
this kind of gift, though, as we shall see by and by, 
it is no sufficient guarantee of a permanently vital and - — 
effective hold by itself. Others, who have greatly 
inferior natural gifts in this respect, have yet such as 
are capable of great enlargement by culture, and such 
as, being duly unfolded by | the necessary Christian 
inspirations, will even put them in advance of the class 
just name(£ They will have a supernatural felicity^) 
all the more perfect that it is felt to be not entirely 
natural. And all that I am going to say, on this 
occasion, will have its value principally in the encour- 
agement given to such. For there are one or two 
classes of natures more unfellow still, that will never />, 
be much advanced by anything. One, for example, 
who are too apathetic and dry to be ever much quick- 



224: TRAINING FOR THE 

ened in the demonstrative sympathies that are needed 
to engage responsive sympathies, who will continue 
therefore to be socially^ inert as now, and be answered 
by social inertness ; even as the corn that is piled 
away in the cribs to dry makes heaps of creature life 
in ear and kernel, that are quite dead to the sense of 
neighborhood, or the touch of any fellow sensibility. 
There is still another class, who are often taken by 
their friends to have a special promise, but are even 
more unhopeful, as regards being ever trained to a 
genuine, solid interest in men, or a living place among 
them, — such I mean as, by their light vivacity, are 
gadding about everywhere, and pitching into every- 
thing on foot; a kind of omnipresent, fac totum people, 
that cannot be escaped. Their chaff is always blow- 
ing in our faces, when we had much rather have a 
chance to see. Such will hardly get to be even men 
of the world, but will rather buzz themselves out of it, 
than into it, by the annoyances they create. 

A second cause of inability in the preacher to gain 
a living contact with men, or his people, is to be 
ry found in a bad moral development, such as makes him 
at once less capable of a living interest in them, 
and them less capable of interest in him. Thus if 
one is seen to be acting the sycophant, if another is 
jealous, scenting always visibly some disrespect or 
higher claim of merit, if another is of a plainly sensual 
habit, another pretentious or vain of his performances, 
and, to make short a catalogue that is long, if any one 
is unreliable, irresponsible, irritable in his tempers, 



PULPIT MANWARD. 225 

obstinate in his will, or what is worst of all, practically 

untrue, there will almost certainly be no genuine 
heartiness in his devotion to them, and all their gates 
will even be more certainly shut against him. For if 
his particular obliquities are not formal!}' known, or 
discovered, the stamp of a something sinister, untrust- 
worthy, and low, will be felt upon him, and he will be 
too scantily respected to have any considerable power. 
But we have, again, three or four hindrances or 
disqualifications, that come along, hand in hand, with 
our ministerial training itself ; being false or dispro- 
portionate modes of interest in other directions, that 
take us quite away from all true interest in men. 
Thus, brought together as they are in our seminaries, 
young men talk much, almost unavoidably, of relative 
standing, and the places to be gotten by each ; whereby 
the ambition for place gets large development. Then 
afterwards, when our places are taken, the same thing 
still goes on, as we see by our frequent discoveries 
that we have fallen into what we call " uncongenial 
places." And then, as we must have our changes, it 
comes out every week in gazette, that one or another 
preacher, beginning to be known, is going to this or 
that more prominent, that is, more congenial, place. 
The people meantime, seeing how much it signifies to 
be place, get tired of being place to second rate 
preachers, and take their turn also in pitching us down 
descending grades that mortify us, and make us more 
discouraged, and push us farther away in feeling from 
men, as we are less appreciated by them. Or, if our 



226 TRAINING FOR THE 

changes are all in the ascending order, we are likely to 
be only so much better pleased with ourselves, and to 
finally die in our position of prominence, only half as 
much felt and respected as if we had died in the first 
little nest that was given us. How many die beside 
of too much place, before their time arrives, — not to 
go, let us hope, to their own place afterwards. 

Another infelicity of our training is, that it often 
begets a very disproportionate interest in the direction 
of abstractive theology. The result is that we are 
taken quite away from men, and become practically 
unsphered, or disabled. Our over-abstractive exer- 
cise has extirpated our most valuable sensibilities. 
We had a skin, and now we have a crust. I speak 
here with the greater freedom, because I believe there 
is less of undue theologic tension in your school than 
elsewhere, and because your very scheme of terms 
and studies proposes, if possible, to keep you in the 
living world and make you a part of it. Still there 
is danger for us all, that we get stalled in abstrac- 
tions, and dry up in them. Our gospel, if we put 
ourselves to thinking out a gospel, will of course be 
a little too completely ours, small of course, and dry, 
and pebbly, representing well the tiny molds of our 
own abstractive faculty. And when we go to preach 
it, we shall be looked upon rather as abstract men 
than men alive, — theologic lay figures, sombre, intro- 
verted, dreary-looking faces, beholding always, stick- 
ing for and as it were becoming the inevitable propo- 
sitions. There will be a kind of nonsense look both 



P L'LPI T M A N \V A R D . 



227 



in what we are and what we are doing, and the dry 
formalities we range in will be like the corridors - 
nicely flanked by the exactly piled bones of the ten 
thousand virgins in the crypts of Cologne. I make 
do objection here to theology. Abstractions will do 
us no damage, if we do not make gods and finalities 
of them. Our Christian mind must have them, it 
would seem, for its gymnastic. Neither could we 
understand ourselves, without some articulation of 
our thoughts. The difficulty is that we so easily lose 
the sense of persons, or souls, and get our whole 
appetite set for propositions, needing every hour to 
pray both God and our teachers : " feed me with food 
convenient for me.'' If only we had each five hun- 
dred theologies, just to show us what the true great 
gospel is by so many little ones made out of it, our 
ardor might be sufficiently checked to allow us some 
right interest in the welfare of men. 

We are likely also, in a similar way, to have a 
wholly disproportionate interest awakened in subjects, 
as distinguished from men, or persons. As our cul- 
ture is advanced, and our invention sharpened, we 
find a pleasure and sometimes take a pride, in raising- 
great subjects, fine subjects, new subjects. It is 
almost as good as if we made a gospel ourselves. 
Our success too attracts a certain admiration. But 
the gospel is not for subjects, save as the subjects are 
for people, or souls. There are a great many grand, 
beautiful, fresh subjects in it. — not one too many. — 
and it is our privilege to catch the hint of all pro- 



228 TRAINING FOR THE 

foundest things from the subtlest intimations. God's 
own Spirit too will show us tenderly in, where the 
mines of truth are richest and least explored, that we 
may bring out ores and gems and all best gifts for 
his flock. But if we care to please ourselves in the 
skill or beauty of our processes, if we have any 
interest in our subjects that does not respect their 
uses, — what feeling they will kindle, what conviction 
raise, what comfort of God they will bring, what they 
will be, when they have fallen off the tongue into the 
ear, and are lodged there in the inward silence, — what 
are we doing in our fine subjects that belongs any way 
to our work in the hearts of our people ? And if we 
complain that by such astounding merits they will 
not be taken captive, is it they that are senseless, or 
we ? As if by so great skill in raising subjects, we 
were going to compensate them for making nothing 
of their persons, or even of their personal eternity ! 
Again our training often makes us disproportionally 
alive to the matter of pulpit success, when we have 
only the tamest concern for men. We are trained, 
in fact, to look after and greatly value success. And 
then, when we take our places, we are ready to com- 
pliment our devotion in the felt intensity of our desire 
to make such advances in our work. But there is a 
distinction here that we are exceedingly apt to miss, 
because of the subtlety of it ; we are running a mill, 
otherwise called a church, which is ours, and we very 
earnestly desire success, it may be, not for the souls' 
sake of the people, but for the mill's sake. We put 



PULPIT MAN WARD. 229 

ourselves into the cause with great industry of en- 
deavor. We work our sermons in the hardest way, 
and preach them in a way as hard, — not a whit harder 
to us than to the people, — straining every faculty to 
the utmost, and straining also them by our heavy 
objurgations. What does it mean, we say, that, when 
we are putting our lives into the grave, we get no 
sympathy and nobody comes to our help ? Never was 
there any Christian people, we think, so utterly dead 
and destitute of care for their Master. It is as if we 
were knocking at a tomb ! But verily there is no 
wonder here ; we get no response, because there is 
nothing to respond to. We are laying ourselves out 
for the post, and not for the people, and it cannot be 
expected that a post will respond. Our manner be- 
sides tells the whole story. The fact is out by the 
laws of expression, when neither we nor our people 
think it. If we were after the men, if our spirit 
yearned for the men, our eye, and voice, and tenderly 
deep look of concernment, would be out, gathering in 
all feeling responsive to our feeling, but since we 
yearn only for the mill, there is no particular reason 
why the men should be moved by it. I very much fear 
that what we call our desire for the salvation of our 
people, that which wears our life out so unsparingly, 
is really a desire in a great many more cases than we 
know to have success for ourselves. This ignis fatuus 
hovers all the while about us, shallows our feeling 
and beguiles our prayers. 



230 TRAINING FOE THE 

We come now to the second general department of 

our subject, where it is proposed to show, or at least 
to suggest, the methods by which we may be trained 
and may train ourselves to a more personal, or less 
impersonal kind of interest. 

And first of all. it must be noted, that any due 
interest in men supposes a living observation of men. 
Just here it is that a great many, falling into an 
utterly heedless habit, sink all apparent capacity of 
sympathy with mankind. We can do something to 
break up such a habit, and something also may possi- 
bly be done for us. Let it be understood that we have 
a wonderfully fruitful out-door lesson here, that is 
always demanding our study. God has given us eyes, 
and we have no right to lose the benefit of eyes. And 
yet there are thousands of men who are really halved 
in capacity all their life long, because they omit to 
see. Their human feeling gets no play : they miss 
the possibility of living sympathies : they get too far 
stupefied under the world to allow their ever knowing 
what it is. or becoming a part of it. What can such 
minds do in preaching a gospel ? Xo. the preacher 
wants to be a man. as truly as to be a Christian, and 
he will not be much of a Christian if he is not a man. 
He must be out therefore, using sharp insight every- 
where, and looking deep down through all the sinuosi- 
ties and cunning varieties of the great world-pageant 
before him. He must see the men. the women, the 
children, the neighborhood, the nation, the times, 
dramatizing themselves in what is called societv. And 



PULPIT MAN WARD. 231 

it must be no mere beholding of surfaces, as when 
some animal looks on the same things; but there must 
be a looking far in, where the eternities are. Great 
instincts must be seen overtopping the summits of 
pride, and squatting among the lowest vices. The 
grandeur of the being must be seen in the meanness 
of the life. The honors that are due to principle must 
be seen wriggling out under motivities that only pla)' 
reverence and character. Everything must be signifi- 
cant ; the house, the church, the school, the street, 
the shop ; works, voices, gaits ; and, what is quite as 
full of revelation, the concealments, — all to be con- 
strued in no cynical way, but so lovingly that the 
bright, sweet virtues will awaken no interest more 
tender than the virtues that are sick or fallen. The 
observer has a long inventory given him, and he must 
play all his many-colored human sympathies into it 
to bring out the interpretation. Nobody can tell or 
guess what he will see, or meet, or be overtaken by, 
going into the street any most common day of the 
year. He cannot pass round a block, without meeting 
some revelation that is a complete chapter of life. 
And this open-eyed way of living would have a won- 
derfully sharpening, freshening power in every one 
who is being trained for the gospel, if only it were 
faithfully maintained ; all the better if he would 
formally engage, when he returns at night, to catechize 
himself as to what he has seen and the meaning of 
it ; better still if friends would engage to catcehize 
each other; and it would not be absurd, if professors 



232 TRAINING FOR THE 

would sometimes drop the book-lore subjects and 
spring the question, " What have you seen to-day ? " 
And the answers gotten, I strongly suspect, would 
give a more true indication of the men, than any of 
the class-work answers they obtain. One must answer, 
that he remembers seeing nothing but his own face in 
the glass. Another will want prompting to be sure 
that he has seen anything. Another will have seen 
upon the street some thousands, probably, of faces, no 
two of them alike, and having all as many thousand 
characters and histories written upon them ; quite a 
number of which, as he began to read them in passing, 
had excited a wonderfully curious and deep interest. 
A fourth, less discursive, but not less sharply percep- 
tive, will perhaps only report having seen a horseshoe 
nailed up over a door ; whereby he was let into a new 
impression of superstition, as the underground fact, 
or token, of man's religious nature ; and if he should 
go on, for answer, to bring out the subterranean work- 
ing of the same, it must be a very good lecture that 
will signify more. Let this living out-door observa- 
tion be kept up, and never intermitted. No man ever 
is alive to his kind, who does not see them with a 
living eye. 

I suggest again, as a matter closely related, the very 
large, really sublime interest we should get in persons, 
or souls, in distinction from subjects, by putting the 
mind down carefully on the study, or due exploration 
of sin. I do not mean by this any theologic explora- 
tion, such as we have reported in our systems, no 



PULPIT MAN WARD. 233 

questioning about the origin, or propagation, or totality, 
or disability, or immedicable guilt of sin, but a going 
into and through it as it is, and the strange wild work 
it makes in the intestine struggles and wars of the 
mind. For it is a fact, I fear, that we sometimes very 
nearly kill our natural interest in persons, by just 
bolting them down theologically into what we call 
death and there making an end. We clap an extin- 
guisher on them, in this manner, and they drop out of 
interest, just where they become most interesting, — 
where meaning, and size, and force, and depth of sor- 
row, and amount of life, and everything fit to engage 
our concern is most impressively revealed. Say no 
more of the dignity of human nature, here is some- 
thing far beyond all that ; a wild, strange flame raging 
inwardly in that nature, that, for combinations of 
great feeling, and war, and woe, is surpassed by no 
tragedy or epic, nor by all tragedies and epics together. 
Here in the soul's secret chambers are Fausts more 
subtle than Faust, Hamlets more mysterious than 
Hamlet, Lears more distracted and desolate than Lear ; 
wills that do what they allow not, and what they 
would not, do ; wars in the members ; bodies of death 
to be carried, as in Paul ; wild horses of the mind, 
governed by no rein, as in Plato ; subtleties of cunning, 
plausibilities of seeming virtues, memories writ in 
letters of fire, great thoughts heaving under the brim- 
stone marl of revenges, pains of wrong and of sympa- 
thy with suffering wrong, aspirations that have lost 
courage, hates, loves, beautiful dreams, and tears ; all 



i:3i ::i:::;v- ::: ::: 

Hi se acting at cross-purposes and representing, as it 
were to sight, the broken order of the mind. Getting 
into the secret working, and seeing how the drama 
goes on in so many mystic parts, the wondrous life- 
scene, — shall we call it poetry- ! — takes on a look at 
::".:t "::--.: ..::" mi r:~"J. i~i -izzzli-z. :■.:'- i — ::;_- — -? 
call the person becomes a world of boundless capaei- 
:irs shaken out of their law, energies in full conflict 
and without government, passions that are wild, sor- 
rows that are weak. By such explorations, never to 
be exhausted by discovery, our sense of person, or 
mind, or soul, is widely opened and may always be 
kept fresh; a most necessary qualification for any 
right seeking of men, such as may obtain a living eon- 
:: ion with them in the matter of their immortal 
— T.:.":"r. I: — ill n::. ?:. ".: ■:- v.: t;:- zlj :'_,: rz,:. t r 
as, but persons: for persons will have the freshest 
meaning, and be thought of as the deepest and most 
:;s:i:"-::i:".- kini ;: =-.: ::;■". Lr: nif "r-~i a :. :: : :^"- 
tion here that reaches farther: viz.. that if some 
qualified teacher, by some ten or twenty years of 
study, could worm out a thoroughly perceptive inter- 
pretation of sin, or course of lectures on the working 
or pathology of mind under evil, he would offer a con- 
tribution to the true success of Christian preaching, 
greater than, perhaps, any human teacher has ever 
yet lontributed. 

Another very important thing, as regards training 
;■;: -t>t- :■: : 1: ..:_•- : :. 1 —>: 1 ::;~errs: ::: :\v: ::-ll :~-nirr.. 
is the being earnestly and early engaged in efforts to do 



PULPIT MANWARD. 235 

them good. For it is a fixed law of the mind that we 
feel what we serve, and appreciate, even up to the 
point of enthusiasm, what we long and strenuously 
endeavor to aeconiplish. By such practical tension, 
all our powers are harnessed and put to the draught 
together. And it is a matter of immense consequence, 
in this view, that every one who is preparing for the 
Christian ministry should put himself into a Christian 
way of training for it, by having on hand works of 
love and mercy to man such as will draw him into the 
closest terms of fidelity, and kindle in his feeling the 
highest enthusiasm. Mere scholar-hood is no fit train- 
ing without this. Taken separately from this, it is 
really a training away from qualifications and not 
towards them. Let him go into by-places and dark 
neighborhoods, seeking out Christ's poor and sick ; 
drawing others out of the wrecks of fortune and the 
more appalling wrecks of vice, by his Christian sym- 
pathy ; teaching the ignorant, and especially bending 
himself upon the neglected little ones of the street ; 
knowing well that every child's love wakened in his 
bosom freshens him in the deepest springs of his life, 
and keeps him young in the simple humanities that 
draw him closest to his fellow-men. All this we say, 
but we do not often take the force of it ; still the works 
we put ourselves upon are too often only a matter by 
the way. The great chief matter is the school and 
what the school will do for us. No, no ! The true 
preacher needs even more to be graduated at the great 
university of sorrow than here. Mercies are greater 



236 TRAINING FOR THE 

things than notions, and here is the place to learn the 
mercies. These are the talent of the heart and the 
talent of the head is not greater. And how many of 
our really best, most pungent, most effective preach- 
ers, have "been almost wholly trained by their good 
works, and the human wants and woes that engage 
them ! By these they purchase also to themselves a 
good degree ; much better than some of the degrees 
Ave more frequently hear of and less frequently respect. 
Little children, sorrows of the house, bitter sorrows of 
the street and the saloon, — these are their professors 
and they do their teaching well. Only be it under- 
stood that every thing you undertake in this schooling 
of work must be heartily done, and never in a way of 
slackness that is glad when the time is up and the 
duty ended ; for in that way all benefit will be reversed 
and you will lose even twice as much as it was your 
privilege to gain. One single hour in a week, given 
to a Sunday-school in this slack way of merely formal 
duty, will uncreate more capacity for living approach 
to men, than six whole days of seminary training 
ever created. 

Thus far we have been moving, for the most part, 
in the plane of mere self -exercise. We must now 
ascend to the higher plane of God and the Spirit. It 
may seem paradoxical, but it is profoundly true, that 
if we are to get the highest possible, only true interest 
in our fellow men, we must go up into God to find it. 
They are made in his great image, which signifies much 
to him, though commonly not much to us. We try 



PULPIT MANWARD. 237 

to use the Pact sometimes as a theological magnifier 
of man, but God feels it. And what is peculiar to 
him, our bad state under evil does not abate his inter- 
est in us, but rather seems to increase it. He beholds 
the great machine of retributive causation, good in 
itself, necessary even for us, crushing us, as phos- 
phorated bones are crushed in the mill, and he does 
not allow that his Fatherhood is measured, or was 
ever to be, by this grinding machine of causes that we 
call Nature. If Nature and her causes own him God, 
there is in him what is more than a mere Godship of 
nature, a Lamb-side of holy flexibility, where he suffers 
and sorrows, and where, as Lamb, " he was slain from 
the foundation of the world ;" always engaged, before 
these fallen children were made, to unlock the crea- 
tion's causes by suffering, and take them forth out of 
their sin. All which is discovered to us, how sub- 
limely, in that closing stage of revelation, where the 
throne of the Universe is called no more henceforth 
the throne of God, as if he were the God of Nature, 
but the throne of God and of the Lamb !" Deific 
sorrow or affliction then is here to be the power. "In 
their affliction he is afflicted, and he bears them and 
carries them all the days of old." He brings out 
leaders and prophets rising up early to send them, 
organizes rites, draws out migrations, leads back cap- 
tivities, and, when the fullness of time is come, sends 
forth his Son, — all which is opened to us in its inmost 
meaning, when it is declared : " For God so loved the 
world." 



238 TRAINING FOR THE 

Now therefore we are to see in him, that is in Jesus, 
what kind of interest pertains to the lot and state of 
man, taken as a fallen personality. Wonderful depth 
of feeling and sacrifice, — how shall we compass it ? — 
in the charities of his burdened life, his sorrow and 
cross ! He so conceives the magnitude and tragic 
pain of souls or persons, that he sinks all orders and 
distinctions of men in one level of suffering pity. 
And he is specially drawn to abject and low people, 
because, understanding him quite as well, they are 
much less withdrawn by hateful and low prejudices. 
His great loving mind stoops to its burdens, and he 
bears the world as we bear the weight of a sorrow. 
The woman at the well is sure that there must be some 
great riddle in him. Little children are gathered to 
him and cannot look away from him. That he gets 
the blind man's heart, when he leads him out, hand in 
hand, to heal him, nobody need tell us. As little 
need we be told, that he gets hold of another's when, 
having healed him, he goes tenderly after him, cast 
out for being healed, — even as some teacher of a Sun- 
day-school goes after the poor, much persecuted pupil, 
he has lately missed, — and leading him back, opens to 
him some of the deepest matters even of his great 
Messiahship. Why should not the penitent woman, 
put in hope and courage by his friendly words, wash 
his feet with her tears ? And would it not be strange, 
if the two sisters of Bethany were at all less nearly 
distracted by their tender hospitalities, after he has 
wept the tears of Messiahship with them at their 



PULPIT MAN WARD. 239 

brother's grave ? Notice further the significance of 
his look, that so much impressed the evangelist, when, 

surrounded by such forlorn multitudes of sick and 
diseased people, his feeling is described by saying, that 
w - he was moved with compassion on them, because 
they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having 
no shepherd." Humble in his figure, scandalously 
unconventional, he is yet respected and felt every- 
where. He touches the quick, so to speak, of all 
human sentiment and conviction and makes a contact 
so pervasive that all incrustations of sin are pierced. 
Without a single air of popularity, or any bait thrown 
out to catch applause, he settles straightway into vital 
connection with men, because of the divine sorrow 
that is in him ; and, though multitudes of high people 
are offended in him, he is(the best approved, most thor- 
oughly felt man that ever lived.y 

Then follow the apostles, and especially Paul, the 
most conspicuous of them. And here we are to see 
how he takes the type of his Master, bearing the same 
burden, and having in it the same call. There was 
nothing of dear favor and popularity in him naturally. 
He was just now but a fierce and fiery bigot and man- 
hunter, wanting men's blood more than their salvation. 
But he had such a burden rolled upon him, and such 
an impression of men wrought in him by his call, that 
the gaining a man was now a kind of supreme aspira- 
tion of his Christcd life. He could not so much as 
trim a sentence to catch the world's applauses ; but 
he could be all things to all men himself, if by any 



24:0 TRAINING FOR THE 

means he could gain some. Looked upon as weak in 
bodily presence and contemptible in speech or speak- 
ing voice, he was yet so deep in love and was so let 
into the knowledge of men by his urgent sympathies, 
that he took the sense and rose to the level, as in 
Athens, of all highest culture and philosophy, and was 
able thus, surpassing art without art, to make about 
the manliest and, morally speaking, grandest speech 
that ever was made. He was never unequal to an 
occasion, even though it was a shipwreck ; simply 
because he had life enough to put his Avord into the 
cargo, and the helm, and the scattered planks, and 
the men. 

In the same way, all the best preachers and pastors, 
coming after, got their success. They had come down 
close enough to men, in the Christly love, to catch the 
sense of their magnitudes. They did not seem there- 
fore to be sailing over the world, like a dust-cloud that 
nobody wants to have settle, but they fell as dew on 
the living sensibilities of their times, dissolving all 
subtlest prejudices, and most cunning entanglements 
of error. Such were Chrysostom, Augustine, Tauler, 
Luther, Fenelon, Whitefield, Summerfield, Gossner, 
all of them felt to be live men, whose contact, like 
the touch of Gideon's angel, put men's hearts ablaze 
on the rock. 

But we must go back a little way to the Scripture 
and observe a remarkable fact which distinguished the 
apostolic preaching, and that of all the more successful 
men that have come after, viz., that the interest they 



PULPIT MAN WARD. 241 

feel in men, or human souls, is not gauged simply by 
what they are, but more by what they are becoming, 

or to be. They see themselves and all God's saints in 
a glorious uplifting or ennobling process, that kindles 
in them an immense expectation, and an almost super- 
human ardor. Glorified mind ! — this is the purpose 
of their gospel. And if there were a university that 
could finish a pupil up to that measure, it would even 
be a fault of the teachers, if their heads were not 
turned by it. On this point these Christian preachers 
put their eye, and the problem is, — " from glory to 
glory." They say nothing of " perfection," save in a 
certain lower, partly accommodated sense of the term, 
where we see them rushing by, or beyond, to some- 
thing better and higher. Or, if they sometimes speak 
of it in the more absolute, ideal sense, they disclaim it 
as a grace already attained, and we see them stretch- 
ing on to apprehend, — not exactly that, which never 
can be apprehended, — but the glory they were appre- 
hended for, beholding, as it were, the gates of glorified 
possibility set open before them, and tracing, with 
their eye, the interminable progressions and the pros- 
pects boundless. 

They put down, first, three " full assurances ; " one 
of : ' hope," one of " faith " and one of " understand- 
ing;" showing the undone, guilty, fearing creature 
put on a base, if he will be, of true certified confidence 
that is well nigh deific. Next, they let him rise to 
the level even of his conscience, which is God's own 
level, pledging there the world, that he lives " in a con- 



242 TRAINING FOR THE 

science void of offence." Then as to the past, the 
guilty and foul past, they allow him to be sure of his 
complete, everlasting purgation ; of being washed and 
made white, — " whiter than snow " ; and snow is very 
white. Again they pledge him a way of duty that is 
" liberty," done as in a " law of liberty ; " the cur- 
rents of the soul being now so rectified as to run no 
more against the currents of God ; for, at the bottom 
of their promised liberty, they behold a paradox of 
possibility given, — " that ye might be filled with all 
the fullness of God" ; filled and tided on, that is, in 
all the tides of God. They do more, they pledge what 
it is scarcely possible to understand and only possible 
to believe, a real traduction or passing over and per- 
sonal appropriation of God's own characters and 
qualities ; so that we may boldly " seek the righteous- 
ness of God," and have it " unto and upon " us in the 
faith of Jesus Christ ; being so restored to the origi- 
nal normal footing, in which we and all upright crea- 
tures were set, to be charactered in God's everlasting 
overflow, even as the day is charactered from the sun. 
So they are likewise to have a traductive knowledge 
from him, that has no assignable limit, " the knowl- 
edge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual under- 
standing," his " anointing that teacheth all things." 
They conceive also great incomings of power, which 
are to put our being, so to speak, in the deific quanti- 
ties ; saying, " whatsoever ye ask believing," — " greater 
works than these," — " be thou, sycamine, plucked up 
and cast in the sea ; " where they get us raised to 



PULPIT MANWARD. 243 

gifts of possibility so nearly boundless, that we forth- 
with set our incontinent reason, commonly, to a set- 
tlement or defining of their necessary limitations ; not 
perceiving that they are purposely made boundless, 
oecause there is meant to be no bound, save what will 
he contained in the immensely variable possibilities 
and gradations of faith. They expect also a fertility 
in works of beneficence that is not to be measured by 
limitations ; that every man shall be a light, and a 
salt, as diffusive as the sun and the sea ; where also 
Christ himself declares: "He that believeth on me, as 
the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow 
rivers of living water." Rivers begin small, and 
grow large, and run a long time, and stretch them- 
selves afar, and move irresistibly ; and how much it 
signifies to be a river ! And finally, what rises high- 
est and signifies most, they behold a restoration begun 
of the mind's broken order under evil, and a re-crys- 
tallization of it in its normal working and harmony. 
Thus, coming into " the spirit of love," they perceive 
to be the same thing as coming into " a sound mind." 
They also pre-figure in Christ a casting down of all 
wild " imaginations " and a " bringing into captivity 
of every thought to the obedience of Christ." Blessed 
and high and dear captivity will it now be within, 
when all the propagations of thought, free thought, 
are captivated in sweet law, and set playing in the 
chime of order. In all which there seems to be an- 
ticipated a moving of the soul under its laws, so 
angelically beautiful and true, that when the will is 



244 TRAINING FOR THE 

withdrawn, as in sleep, it will even dream in heaven's 
order. 

Conceiving now these dignities, and powers, and 
forthcoming glories of souls, and beholding their 
uplifting of stature in the new divine life which is 
called their salvation, the preacher will better appre- 
ciate both men and the gospel, and will be raised to a 
new plane of action by the interest he feels. He will 
have great inspirations manward, such as suffer no 
slack working, such as make him instant in season 
and out of season, and keep him always in a thoroughly 
vital connection with his times. 

Having suggested, in this very imperfect sketch, 
some of the modes of training by which we may bring 
ourselves closer to men, and make ourselves more 
vitally felt by them, I abstain from further illustra- 
tions. 

One of my anxieties, in the treatment of this sub- 
ject, has been to give no look of countenance, or favor, 
to a certain frivolous and light way of speaking in 
regard to it, such as we too frequently hear. As if it 
were only a matter of natural address in which the de- 
ficiency manwards appears, or as if nothing more were 
wanting for the remedy, but to be more completely 
and bravely men ; or, as some will phrase it, more like 
natural born people and men of the world. But this 
contemptuous lightness, this very cheap kind of satire, 
is itself much further down below the range of dig- 
nity than it supposes, in that it so little conceives, or 



PULPIT MANWARD. 245 

so blindly ignores, what is the deepest, grandest note 
of capacity in all high preaching, viz., the momentum 
of God's private inspirations ; that which makes the 
man a symbol, and a voice, and a power. Therefore, 
let him be or become as bravely man as you please, 
put him wholly on the felicity of his personal address, 
or the popularity of his natural parts, and he is nobody. 
A naturally demonstrative manner and action are 
good, and yet, by themselves, are good for nothing. 
The fine declaimers and speaking prodigies of the 
schools turn out always here to be only men of straw ; 
with the disadvantage of not being combustible. A cer- 
tain manner of reserve and strong discipline is often 
more impressive, even though there be some awkward- 
ness in it. The preacher needs to be a man rather 
who has been taken apart, sometime, from men, to be 
closeted with God in private struggles. Any one can 
be accepted and made welcome by men, who will take 
their key and be one of them, but whoever will come 
to them closely in the key of their religious nature, 
must, first of all, be drawn up close to God, and come 
down thence deifically flavored to them. Besides it 
is only by sometimes getting far enough apart from 
them to adequately think who they are, that any one 
can duly understand them, and be qualified for the 
friendliest, most effective care of them. Large natu 
ral sympathies are good, but large supernatural are 
better ; even such as have partly sounded the com- 
passions of God, and had their own private Gethse- 
mane. There will of course be no advertising by the 



246 TRAINING FOR THE 

preacher of what God has been doing with him in 
secret, no parade of sensibility, no affectations of con- 
cern, but it will come out, as in spite of concealment, 
and, if it may, in spite of a certain robust manner, 
that here is one whose heart is heaving under a weight 
of private burden unconfessed. And this is the true 
hiding of power. A great, right soul, bearing visibly 
such loads from God, will never have a dreary, 
dreamy, far-off way, but will go directly into men's 
bosoms by the certificate of his own true feeling and 
his manly sense of man. Even his " good morning " 
will go through them as a welcome word from some 
beautiful otherwhere not of this world. 

And such a man will not be simply one who has put 
his education-money into the preparation of this par- 
ticular trade or profession, going forward now into it, 
as a practitioner duly qualified. He will not speak 
secundum artem out of his mere school advantages, 
but as one who has been training under the God-bur- 
dens of the great salvation, one who is now harnessed 
in the inspirations of his call and qualified as one of 
God's prophets. 

I must add yet one word more that will draw us 
down upon the final point of our subject more closely. 
I admitted in the outset that a preacher, separated 
from men by his office, will be separated also from 
tfieir sympathies, if he is not quickened from above, 
to reclaim the hold he has lost. I have also just now 
said, that a certain degree of withdrawment may be 
necessary to the best understanding of them, and the 



PULPIT MAN WARD. 247 

closest sympathy with their want. The two points 
are not incompatible or contrary, but wholly compre- 
hensible together. And these two poles we must 
Learn how to hold in even conjunction. We are never 
to be afraid of going into separation from men's 
worldly tastes, or mere natural affinities, lest we lose 
our hold of them, but we are to get the stronger hold 
of their respect and sympathy by rightly doing it. 
We are to be always going apart, that we may come 
nigh ; to be getting our Promethean fire from above 
and our clay from below ; to send our prayers up after 
strength for our burdens and find below the burdens 
to be carried ; to keep in God's high sympathy and 
bring that sympathy down close to men. And who. 
my friends, should better understand this footing of 
adjustment than you ? For, look, what means yon 
solitary bulkhead, pier, tower, standing a long way off 
in the sea abreast of your city ? So lonely and so far 
away, so nearly nowhere, has it not a look well nigh 
absurd ? Ah, but there is a hidden connection. It is 
there for what it may be here, or send in hither. Yea, 
out of the belly of that creature flow rivers of living 
water. And here, at this hither end, have you not a 
whole great city pumping, and drawing, and drinking, 
and bathing, day and night and year by year ? And 
how many kinds of comfort does that ample flood dis- 
pense ; slaking your fevers, quelling your fires, laying 
the dust of your streets by showers that do not wait 
for clouds, preparing all your food, feeding the bloom 
of your gardens and conservatories, and filling the 



2iS PULPIT MANWAED. 

lavers set for the Trashing of your sins. And if any 
one should say, behold there is water enough closer 
at hand, where the said f ar-off tower could hare been 
more easily built, it must be enough to answer, that 
it was purposely set a long two miles away, that it 
might take in the waters of the clear, pure, central 
deep, and not the filthy dregs of the shore. Men and 
brethren, so be it ours to minister no gospel on the 
hither shore of our mere natural parts and powers, 
but to be conduit mouths opened far off rather, in 
God's pure, deep eternity, thence to bring in rivers 
of life for the cleansing, health-restoring, medicating 
grace of the world. 



VIII. 
OUT: rlFI 10 IHE DLiiSSAIIOS 



The most unilluminated and least valuable of the 
Bampton Lecture volumes has been recently published 
by Mr. tt, under the title. -The Dogmatic 

th : " a title which does al»out equal violence to both 
the terms of which it is compounded. For the Gospel 
is no dogma, and if it were, could not be a faith. 
The word dogma indiea* in its etymology and sup- 
poses in its common uses, -omething thought ; it is 
opinion offered to opinion as having a standard right : 
whereas the gospel is a revelation made up of fact 
and form and fiarure. and offered as a presentation to 
faith. It calls itself indeed ** the faith." and he infers 
at once that, since it is an ** authoritative faith." it 
must be dogmatic. Whereas all truth has this attrib- 
f authority, though it does not follow that it has 
such kind of authority as allows it to be no faith at 
all. _:na. What is .riven to faith is put forth 

in some fact-form or symbol to be interpreted by 

* Contributed to the Hour* at Home, in 1869. VoL YIL The 
reader is referred for a full discussion of this subject to the "Essay 
on Language" in the volume^ " God in Christ." 



250 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

(imaginative insight, or the discerning power of faith/ 
What is given to opinion is given to the notional un- 
derstanding. One imports liberty, and the other a 
certain dictational right as respects thinking. In one 
there is a perceiving by trust and the soul-welcome of 
trust : the other is a notional perceiving or thinking, 
without perhaps any soul-welcome at all. In his 
treatise therefore on the Dogmatic Faith, we are not 
surprised to find that Mr. G-. is rather mixing ideas 
than clearing them, confounding also things to be 
spiritually discerned with things logically reasoned, or 
ecclesiastically determined. 

His argument is principally concerned in removing 
" six " opposing claims, or points maintained. Whether 
he succeeds or not is a matter of small consequence, 
for he would not prove his doctrine if he should. Just 
that after all may be a fact, which, by a certain 
remarkable fatality, he assumes is not ; for he ventures 
strangely on the affirmation, that the opposers of theo- 
retic dogmatism in our day " do not rest on any alle- 
gation of inaccuracy in the process of formulating 
truth, but on objections against the existence and 
certainty of the truth itself." Exactly contrary to 
which, it will be seen that, on this question of a pos- 
sible " accuracy in formulating truth." in distinction 
from " the existence and certainty of truth," every- 
thing, in the issue he makes, most emphatically 
depends. He supposes himself that there is to be a 
formulating process ; which is a virtual concession 
that the gospel is not the complete dogma. And the 



TO THE I M A G I N A T I N . 251 

g difficulty here to be encountered is that no 

such process of accuracy in •• formulating " the dogma. 

mite possible hope of bug 3S, \a provided by 

human language. As he himself conceives, dogma is 
M the settled and positive truth stated in words sharply 
defined :" or again, more exactly still. *• a settled and 

certain truth, an attained resting-place for belief, from 
which, as from the maxims of mathematical science, 
we may confidently argue.'" — just what everybody 
knows has never yet been found. And could he simply 
call it opinion, he would see at once that there has 
been no end to opinions under it and against it. Dogma 
has been always going to be. or just about to be settled, 
by some new school or teacher, yet in fact never is. 
If we could possibly think out a gospel, we could not 
frame it and phrase it in language, so as to make a 
finality of what we think. For we have no language 
for opinions in moral and religious matters that is not 
compounded in forms and figures, which are only 
images, and not exact notations for what they repre- 
sent. They are good for the uses of faith and. in fact, 
more wondrously significant and sufficient in that 
manner, but they have no such determinate property 
as permits them to serve the uses of dogma. 

I propose, in these suggestions, no formal contro- 
versy with Mr. Garbett's book. I only refer to it in 
the way of introducing a presentation as nearly oppo- 
site as may be at the point here stated. What I am 
advance will hold equally well in all matters of 
philosophic speculation : but. to simplify the argument. 



252 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

I propose to confine nxy illustrations within the ranges, 
for the most part, of the Christian truth. 

I shall endeavor to exhibit, as far as I can in the 
restricted limits of this article, the fact that our 
Christian Gospel is a Gift more especially to the 
Human Imagination. It offers itself first of all and 
principally to the interpretative imaginings and dis- 
cernings of faith, never, save in that manner, to the 
constructive processes of logic and speculative opinion. 
It is, in one sense, pictorial ; its every line or linea- 
ment is traced in some image or metaphor, and by no 
possible ingenuity can it be gotten away from meta- 
phor ; for as certainly as one metaphoric image is 
escaped by a definition, another will be taken up, and 
must be, to fill its place in the definition itself. Math- 
ematical, language is a scheme of exact notation. All 
words that are names of mere physical acts and objects 
are literal, and even animals can, so far, learn their 
own names and the meaning of many acts done or com- 
manded. But no animal ever understood a metaphor: 
that belongs to intelligence, and to man as a creature 
of intelligence ; being a power to see, in all images, 
the faces of truth, and take their sense, or read 
[intus lego'] their meaning, when thrown up in language 
before the imagination. 

Every word is a figure called in to serve a meta- 
phoric use, in virtue of the fact that it has a physical 
base naturally significant of the spiritual truth or 
meaning it is used metaphorically to express. Physical 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 253 

bases are the timber, in this manner, of all mental 
language, and are generally traced in the etymologies 
of the dictionaries ; though sometimes they are lost 
and cannot be traced. And it is not merely the verbs, 
nouns, adjectives, that carry these metaphoric uses, 
but their very grammar of relationship, as they are 
found originally in space themselves, is also framed 
in terms of space by the little words called prepositions, 
which show their spatial images in their faces, up, 
down, by, through, to, under, from, beyond and the like. 
The whole web of speech is curiously woven metaphor, 
and we are able to talk out our thoughts in it, — never 
one of them visible, — by throwing out metaphoric 
images in metaphoric grammar so as to give them 
expression. 

Let us go back now and take our lesson at the type 
history of the Scriptures. The temple and the whole 
temple service, — the sacrifices, lustrations of blood, 
purifyings, and the like, — was a figure, an apostle 
declares, for the time then present. His word here 
is xapapo\r) [par able. ~\ Sometimes he uses the word 
image, sometimes ensample, and oftener the word type; 
but they all mean nearly the same thing. And here it 
is that we come upon the curiously fantastic type-learn- 
ing, which figures so conspicuously in the sermons, 
commentaries, and theologic treatises of the former 
time. It is only fit subject of mirth, when it assumes 
that the types were given to signify to the ages that 
received them the great living truths of Christianity, 
and not to be vehicle and metaphor, afterward, for 



i M or: jospbl a ift 

them when they should arrive. These types, patterns, 
shadows, images, parables, ensamples, or whatever 
else they were called, are simply bases of words pre- 

":;..: :1 :•: ?rr~f : > —~~: .".-.::? :: :_t -r~ -:>: ::;._ — Lrii 
it should come- Aud for this purpose, in part T the 
altar service was instituted ; for the gospel grace was 
to he a grace supernatural,, and there were no types, 
no bases of words in nature, that could serve the 
LtIt — ::;-i^t:: ;"..::: v — 5. All :lir :_;-v...". :_->-; .urs 
were in a lower field of significance, and all mere 
n; tiz :'-'-. ip: — irll -":::. :: :hf zi^rk 

It may occur to some as an objection, that the 
CLT-iSTle siys : •• : lirirf ::: :!_: ::zir tI-e-z. jr-r-f::.." 
3-i: Iriir:-? ••::: :ii "-—- :_rii ;:r»Ti:. " inlj in The 
sense that in using the altar-rites or rites of sacrifice, 
::: .IltLi Liririy o: ~:rslilp. :lir h:i :: ;!;: ~t-t 
brought into faiths, repentances and tempers analogical 
:■: :l:5r :: :le - : \ -- - " :-t. I: 1::- ::: _ :^>:::_ :h;-: 
:l.r7 ; :~ '!".. :>":." :-".:" mi :lr _ : - rl r::.. :t ~:±ri 
::.! : It-'. :1: — t 1 iz rhri: rl:es X:: r~en :lif 
:: : .I::- ":._t_i— >:- .:^1t:-:: : 1 -17 ^".;:h ibli.z. Iv.t 

— :re searching what f and what manner of time, the 
Spirit of Christ which was in them did sign 
These men of old were in the patterns of the heavenly 
-!__:__-. n;- :z :lr If.v-Tiilj -!:::_- -1:^^>:>. Tliri: 
rites were the bases of words some time to be used as 
metaphors of the Christian grace, but they did not 
see, as yet, what things the metaphor 3 wei going to 
express. They lived in the shadow of good thiiu - : 
come, but not in the very import of them. 



TO THE IMAGINATION 255 

But ire must look into language itself and see how 
the great revelation of G \s soming and to come. 

31 of all. it is iiii} 3si Le, as we have seen already, 
that any terms of Language for mental notions, things 
of the spirit, unseen worlds, beings invisible, should 
ever exist, save as there are physical images found to 
serve as rnetaphoric bases of the necessary words : 
for we cannot show them to the eye and then name 
them, as we do acts or objects visible : we can only 
hint them by figures, or objects metaphorically signifi- 
cant of them. And so we see beforehand, that all 
the truths of religion are going to be given to men by 
images ; so that all God's truth will come as to the 
imagination. Hence the necessity of the old physical 
religion to prepare draperies and figures for the new. 
Hence also, when we come to the new. we are con- 
stantly met. we perhaps know not why or how. by 
images taken from the old. in a way that seems half 
fanciful and curiously mystical. Adam is the figure 
of him that was to come, the second Adam, because 
he. Christ, was to be the head, correspondently. of a 
spiritual generation. Christ is David. Melchizedek, 
high priest, the spiritual Rock, a prophet like unto 
If sea and I know not what beside. John the Bap- 
tist is Elias that was to come. In the same manner. 
heaven is a paradise or garden, or a new Jerusalem. 
or a state of glorious city life in God ; the new society 
of grace is to be the kingdom of God, or the kingdom 
of heaven; and Christ himself Lb Messiah, that is. 
king. All the past is taken up as metaphor for all the 



256 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

future. All these things, we are to say, "happened 
unto them for ensamples," that is, types for the ex- 
pression of our higher truth. 

And so we are questioning often about the credibility 
of a double meaning in scripture ; as if it were a 
thing fanciful beyond belief. Whereas the meanings 
double and redouble as often as new typologies are 
made ready. The spiritual comes out of the physical, 
and the more spiritual out of the less ; just because 
one thing is ready for the expression of another and 
still another. There is nothing fantastical in it, but 
it comes to pass under a fixed law of language, — all 
language, even the most common, — even as a stalk of 
corn pushes out leaf from within leaf by a growth 
that is its unsheathing. 

Every dictionary shows the unsheathing process 
always going on ; meanings coming out of meanings, 
and second senses doubling upon first, and third upon 
second, ajid so every symbol breeding families of mean- 
ings on to the tenth or twentieth and saying always, 
in the scripture way : " that so it might be fulfilled." 
This fulfilling is no scripture conceit, but is the sys- 
tematic fact of language itself. 

We shall get further insight into this matter by 
just considering the state of mind a prophet is in 
when he writes. He is lifted by his inspiration into 
a state of high beholding, as regards some matter 
which is to be the particular subject of his testimony; 
and the divine perceptiveness thus quickened in him, — 
so far the particular matter he sees, — will be the spec- 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 257 

ially God-given import of his message. Thou lie is 
to conceive, express, set forth in words for himself 
what is in his beholding. But he cannot testify any 
thing unknown, we see at once, save by images taken 
from the known. Suppose him to be set in some high 
pose of seership that really relates, if he could say it, 
to our new western world and the new day some time 
here to be seen. He cannot say "America," for that 
is a name not known as Grecia was. If he says, 
" beyond the sea," it would only mean outside the 
pillars of Hercules or Gibraltar Rock. He cannot 
seize on images in the Gulf Stream, or the Mam- 
moth Cave, or Niagara, or the great lakes, or the 
forests, or the prairies, or the rivers, or the fierce, 
wild warriors of the woods. He has not an image 
distinctly American in his whole stock. What then 
can he say ? Manifestly nothing ; because he has 
nothing in which to say it. Possibly some of Isaiah's 
pictures of the "Isles waiting for God," and "the 
ships of Tarshish bringing sons from far, their silver 
and their gold with them," may have a look this way, 
taking old Tarshish for a figure, but we can never 
know. Under this same law, we have the fact of 
creation, as given in the first chapter of Genesis, 
beautifully illustrated. No human spectator saw the 
creation, and the only way in which it could ever be 
reported was by a kind of prophecy backward. Some 
great prophet soul, we may imagine, coasting round 
the work of God in a power of holy insight, or divine 
beholding, framed, as it were, his own divine concept 



258 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

tion of the fact as progressive, drawing itself on by 
irregular, indefinite stages, — no matter how long or 
short, or even how many, — and to set the stages forth, 
he caught up the natural time-spacing symbol of days, 
and made up a chapter of progressions that took a 
week of days before it was finished. To conceive 
anything more pitiful than the grubbing literalism 
that cannot think of days going thus into metaphor 
because they are in the Almanac would, I think, be 
difficult. Was there ever a case for metaphor more 
easily discernible beforehand ? 

We perceive in these illustrations how every reve- 
lator and teacher of things spiritual or things future, 
gets and must get his power to express the unknown 
by drawing images and figures from the known. As 
he must portray the new world by some old image of 
a Tarshish in the sea, or by some other like symbol, if 
he does at all, or the creation by the spacing figure of 
days, or heaven by the image of a paradise, or a great 
city Jerusalem, so it must be with everything. 

Thus if God is to be himself revealed, he has 
already thrown out symbols for it, filling the creation 
full of them, and these will all be played into meta- 
phor. The day will be his image, the sea, the great 
rock's shadow, the earthquake, the dew, the fatherhood 
care of the child, and the raven and the feeble folk of 
the conies, — all that the creation is and contains, in all 
depths and heights and latitudes and longitudes of 
space, — everything expresses God by some image that 
is fit, as far as it goes. " Day unto day uttereth 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 259 

speech, and night unto night showcth knowledge." 
Metaphor on metaphor crowds the earth and the skies, 
bearing each a face that envisages the Eternal Mind, 
whose word or wording forth it is to be. Again he 
takes a particular people into covenant specially with 
himself, just in order to make their public history the 
Providential metaphor, so to speak, of his rulership 
and redeeming teachership, leading them on and about 
by his discipline, and raising light and shade as be- 
tween them and the world-kingdoms of the false 
gods about them, to set himself in relief as the true 
Lord of all. And then, following still the same law 
of expression by outward fact and image, he crowns 
the revelation process by the incarnate life and life- 
story of his Son, erecting on earth a supernatural 
kingdom to govern the world in the interest of his 
supernatural redemption. And if we do not take the 
word in some light, frivolous, merely rhetoricktrrway, 
we can say nothing of Christ so comprehensively ade- 
quate as to call him the metaphor of God ; God's last 
metaphor ! And when we have gotten all the meta- 
phoric meanings of his life and death, all that is ex- 
pressed and bodied in his person of God's saving help 
and new-creating, sin-forgiving, reconciling love, the 
sooner we dismiss all speculations on the literalities of 
his incarnate miracles, his derivation, the composition 
of his person, his suffering, — plainly transcendent as 
regards our possible understanding, — the wiser shall 
we be in our discipleship. We shall have him as the 
express image of God's person. We shall have " the 



260 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the 
face of Jesus Christ." Beholding in him as in a 
glass the glory of the Lord, we shall be changed into 
the same image. The metaphoric contents are ours, 
and beyond that nothing is given. 

Going on then to matters of spiritual use and ex- 
perience in what we call the doctrine of his gospel, 
we have these given also to the imagination in terms of 
metaphor. As far back as the days of Abraham and 
Moses, words and images for this kind of use were 
very scantily provided. Even prayer was best de- 
scribed as a wrestling match. The prophets found 
images more nearly sufficient. And when Christ 
came, great images were evoked that never had been 
used before. He was called a door to be entered, a 
bread from heaven to be fed upon, a water of life to 
quench the thirst, life, way, shepherd, healer, teacher, 
master, king, and rock. And when the very point of 
a new life begun is to be explained or expounded, he 
draws on the well-known fact of proselyte baptism 
and calls it regeneration : "Art thou a master in Israel 
and knowest not these things ? " Have you not seen 
the Gentile proselyte, before unclean, washed by a 
baptism and so regenerated, born over, naturalized, as 
we say, in Israel ? So the unclean soul of sin, born 
of water and the Spirit, is entered, as a spiritually 
new man, into the kingdom of God. The great expe- 
rience wrought is imaged thus, how beautifully and 
comprehensively, as a change from the unclean to the 
clean ; and so the soul that was alien from God is 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 261 

inducted into citizenship in God's everlasting king- 
dom. No finest words of analysis and psychologic 
statement could describe the great mystery of the 
Spirit half as effectively. So in the same chapter, the 
same thing is set forth under the image of the ser- 
pent lifted up in the wilderness. " Look unto me," 
says the Great Teacher now to be lifted up, " and, by 
that fixed beholding of your faith, the sin-plague in 
you shall be healed." That plague in its secret work- 
ing, that healing in its secret cure, who shall describe 
it psychologically, even as this simple image does by 
its metaphoric use ? Both these images, however, of 
regeneration and of spiritual healing were impossible 
before the ministry of Providence had prepared them. 
They came late because they could not come before. 
The same again was true of the great reconcilia- 
tion or atonement, in Christ's life and death. Plainly 
there was here no lamb, no fire, no altar, no literal 
sacrifice. There was a blood of murder, but no rite 
in blood, no sprinkling, no kind of lustral ceremony. 
And yet all these things are here as in metaphor, and 
are meant to be. i One great object of the old ritual 
was to prepare these images and get them ready as a 
higher language for the supernatural truth. The 
people of the law were put in training under these 
patterns of the heavenly things, till the very mind of 
their nation should be stocked with images and 
metaphors thence derived for the heavenly things 
themselves. Who could ever have conceived the 
ministry and death of Jesus in these words of atone- 



262 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

ment, sacrifice, and cleansing, whose mind had not first 
been Judaized in the stock images of its thinking ? 
Suppose, for example, that some gifted Greek, having 
a soul configured to Plato's methods and ideas, had 
been with Christ, as Peter was, all through his life, 
and then, after his death, had written his epistle to 
expound him and his religion to the world. What 
could he have said of him more adequate than to set 
him forth as a beautiful and wise character doing- 
wonders by his power ; a friend of the poor, a healer 
of the sick, patient of contradiction, submissive to 
enemies, meek, true, the ever good, the perfect fair ? 
That he has done any thing which can be called his 
sacrifice, any thing to recompose the breach of sin or 
to reconcile the world to God, will not occur to him, 
and he has no words to speak of any such thing. Not 
one matter most distinctively prominent in Christ's 
work, as expounded by his apostles^ filling out in 
metaphoric glory all the terms of the altar, could have 
been given, or even thought by him. All the better, 
many will now say ; we shall gladly be rid of all such 
altar figures ; for it is too late in the day to be mak- 
ing Hebrews of us now. But suppose it should hap- 
pen to be true that the all-wise God made Hebrews 
partly for this very thing, to bring figures into speech 
that Greeks and Saxons had not ; that so he might 
give to the world the perfectly transcendent, super- 
natural matter of a grace that reaches high enough to 
cover and compose the relations of men to his gov- 
ernment, a grace of reconciliation. Call the words 



TO THE IMAtil N A T I N . 263 

"old clothes" then of the Hebrews, putting what 
contempt we may upon them, still they are such types 
ami metaphors of God's mercy as he has been able to 
prepare, and Christ is in them as in "glorious ap- 
parel ! " Why to say : " Behold the Lamb of God, 
that taketh away the sin of the world," signifies, in 
the heart's uses, more than whole volumes of palaver 
in any possible words of natural languge. Xo living- 
disciple, having once gotten the sense of these types 
of the altar. Will ever try to get his gospel out of 
them and preach it in the common terms of language. 
Quite as certainly will he never try, having once got- 
ten their meaning, to hold them literally, — Christ 
made literally sin for us, a literal Lamb, literal sacri- 
fice, bleeding literally for the uses of his blood. But 
he will want them as the dear interpreters and equiva- 
lents of God's mercy in the cross, putting himself 
before them to read and read again, and drink and 
drink again their full divine meanings into his soul. 
Beholding more truths in their faces than all the con- 
trived theories and speculated propositions of schools, 
lie will stay fast by them, or in them, wanting never 
to get clear of them, or away from the dear and still 
more dear impression of their power. 

. So far on our way in discovering the close relation- 
ship of God's, revelations and /the inlet function of 
imagination to which they are given, I cannot do 
more, in this part of the subject, than simply to gen- 
eralize the argument by just calling attention to the 
fact that so great a part of our Bible is made up of 



264 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

compositions that are essentially poetic, — nearly all of 
it, except the parts rigidly historic or didactic, and 
even these have their prose largely sprinkled with 
poetry. History itself, in fact, is but a kind of figure, 
having its greatest value, not in what it is, but in what 
it signifies. Besides, the scripture books most nearly 
theologic are handling truths every moment, as we see 
at a glance, by their images. How didactic are the 
parables, and yet they are only metaphors drawn out ! 
In the same way the disciples are God's living epis- 
tles, temples of the Holy Ghost, cities on hills, work- 
ing as servants, running as in races, beholding as in 
glasses, — every single point of instruction comes out 
in some metaphor, so that we may safely challenge 
the specification of one that does not. And when we 
look into the argumentations we find them also hang- 
ing on figures of speech, such as law, circumcision, 
heart, grace, kingdom, life, motions of sins, liberty, 
flesh. Take up the chapters of Paul that are most 
closely reasoned, the fifth to the ninth, for example, 
of the Epistle to the Romans, and the scholar's eye, 
if not the common reader's, will discover some meta- 
phor showing its face and turning the current of 
meaning in every sentence and in almost every prin- 
cipal word. Nay, it will be seen that even the little 
prepositions are struggling as hard in the metaphoric 
revelations as any of the other images concerned 
Thus when we read : " of many offences unto justifi- 
cation ; " " dead to the law by the body of Christ ; " 
" through righteousness unto eternal life ; " " of faith 
that it might be by grace ; " we see the meanings 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 265 

hanging quite as visibly on these little words as on 
the more prominent, and we go back, as it were, to 
their spatial images, before we get the meanings 
hitched in fit relationship. In as many as two cases 
they occur in triads, where some of our subtlest in- 
terpreters discover, as they think, affinities that tally 
secretly with the higher relativities of trinity : " For 
of him and through him, and to him ; " " One God 
and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
and in you all." So strikingly is it shown us, every- 
where on the face of scripture, that it is a gift in 
metaphor to the world's imagination. 

Only God forbid that, when we draw ourselves out 
on this conclusion, we be understood to mean by the 
imagination what the rhetoricians teach, in the girlish 
definitions of their criticism. They describe it as a 
kind of ornamental, mind's-milliner faculty, that excels 
in the tricking out of subjects in high-wrought meta- 
phoric draperies, and such they call " imaginative 
writing." As I am speaking here, the imagination 
has nothing to do with ornament. It is that which 
dawns in beauty like the day because the day is in it ; 
that power in human bosoms which reads the types of 
the creation, beholding the stamps of God's meanings 
in their faces ;/me power that distinguishes truths 
in their images, and seizes hold of images for the 
expression of truths. ) So that a free, great soul, when 
it is charged with thoughts so high, and fresh behold- 
ings in such vigor of life, that it cannot find how to 
express itself otherwise, docs it by images and meta- 



2C6 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

phors in flame that somehow body the meaning to 
imaginative apprehension. 

Holding now this view of truth as presenting itself 
always by images metaphorically significant, never by 
any other possible means or media, it is very clear 
that all our modes of use and processes of interpreta- 
tion must be powerfully affected by such a discovery. 

First of all it must follow, as a principal consequence, 
that truth is to be gotten by a right beholding of the 
forms or images by which it is expressed. Ingenuity 
will miss it by overdoing ; mere industry will do 
scarcely more than muddle it ; only candor, a graciously 
open, clean candor will find it. We can take the sense 
of its images, only by offering a perfectly receptive 
imagination to them, a plate to fall upon that is flavored 
by no partisanship, corrugated by no bigotry, blotched 
by no prejudice or passion, warped by no self-will. 
There is nothing we cannot make out of them, by a 
very little abuse, or perversity. They are innocent 
people who can never vindicate themselves when 
wronged, further than to simply stand and wait for a 
more ingenuous beholding. And it is to be a very 
great part of our honor and advantage in the truth, 
that we have it by the clean docility and noble rever- 
ence that make us capable of it. We shall not be 
afraid of worshiping its images ; for they are not 
graven images, but faces that express the truth because 
they are faces of God. We want, in fact, as a first 
condition, a mind so given to truth that our love and 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 267 

reverence shall open all our sympathies to it and quite 
indispose us to any violent practice on its terms. 

All mere logically constructive practice on them, 
twisting meanings into them, or out of them, that are 
only deducible from their forms and are no part of 
their real significance, must be jealously restrained. 
Nicodemus was falling straightway into this kind of 
mischief, when the words " born again " put him on 
asking, whether a man can be born of his mother a 
second time ? It was in the form of the words, but 
how far off from their meaning ! So, when it is 
declared that God is a rock and that God is a river, 
what follows, since things that are equal to the same 
things are, in strict logic, equal to one another, but 
that a rock is a river ? Meantime God was not de- 
clared to be either rock or river, except in a very 
partial, metaphoric way. In the same way Christ is 
called a priest, and a sacrifice, and it follows in good 
logic that a priest is a sacrifice. Nobody happens, it 
is true, to have reasoned in just this manner, but how 
many do reason that, being called a priest and a sac- 
rifice, he must be exactly both in the sense of the 
ritual ; when, in fact, he is neither priest nor sacrifice, 
save in such a sense as these words, taken as meta- 
phors, are able to convey. Nothing is to be gotten 
ever, by spinning conclusions out of the mere forms 
or images of truth, but mischief and delusion. And 
the record of religion is full of just this kind of delu- 
sion. All mere logical handlings are vicious, unless 
they are so far qualified by insight that insight gives 



268 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

the truth, and then, of course, they are not wanted. 
Indeed, there is nothing in which the world is so 
miserably cheated, as in the admiration it yields to 
what is most logically deductive concerning moral and 
religious questions. It is even the worst kind of fault, 
unless it be only meant, as it often is when we say it, 
that they are written with true intellectual insight, 
which is a very different matter. 

But we must have a theology, some will say ; how can 
religion or religious truth get body, or any firm hold 
of the world, without a theology ? And what is the- 
ology ? It is very commonly supposed to be a specu- 
lated system of doctrine, drawn out in propositions 
that are clear of all metaphor and are stated in terms 
that have finally obtained a literal and exact sense. 
But no such system is possible, for the very plain 
reason that we have no such terms. We have a great 
many words that have lost their roots or have come 
to be so far staled by use that the figures in their 
bases do not obtrude themselves on our notice. But if 
we suppose, as we very commonly do in all the logi- 
cal uses of speculation, that they have become exact 
coins, or algebraic notations for the ideas represented 
by them, we are in a great mistake. When they are 
framed into propositions there is always some element 
of figure in the other words conjoined, or in the gram- 
mar of their prepositions, which makes a figure of the 
sentences constructed. If there is anything we miss 
in the really supreme merit of Professor Whitney's 
late book on language, it is a chapter showing at what 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 269 

poi nt the constructive processes of language leave it, 
as regards the possibilities of an exact notation, for 
the uses of moral and religious speculation. His 
beautiful analysis and fine critical perception would 
have shown us, I have no question, that theologic and 
moral science are about as deep in metaphor as 
prophecy and poetry themselves. 

Some years ago one of our most brilliant, most 
esteemed teachers of theology published a discourse 
on " The Theology of the Intellect and the Feeling," 
meaning, it will be seen, by the Feeling, that which 
feels, or takes the poetic sense of figures and images ; 
the same that I am calling here the Imagination. But 
the Intellect, he conceives, comes in, after all such 
vague presences or presentations to the feeling, gathers 
up the varieties, eliminates the contrarieties, and puts 
down in the terms of an exact language the real 
Christian doctrine. Taking, for example, the mani- 
fold various terms and figures employed in the meta- 
phoric draperies of scripture language relating to the 
beginning of a new life, — "repent," "believe," "make 
you a new heart," " be converted," " born again," — 
" the intellect," he says, " educes light from the col- 
lision of these repugnant phrases, and then modifies 
and reconciles them into the doctrine," — literal now, 
exact, full-made theology, — " that the character of our 
race needs an essential transformation by an interposed 
influence from God." It does not appear to be observed, 
that this very sentence, which affirms the great, 
inevitable, scientific truth of regeneration, is itself 



-70 OUE GOSPEL A GIFT 

packed fall : figures and images, and is, in : 
Lnterpretable onlj with more difficulty and more 
ambiguity than any and all the figures proposed to be 
resolved b j it Thus, for a first metaphor, we have 
'./•:" and what is character? Literally it is 
>n. Then naturally it is one thing, 
morally another, spiritually another. Is it external? 
Is it internal I Is it made up ■;: acta and habits I Is 
it the general purpose of the man ? Or is it a birth 
into good affections by the Spirit of God ? Or is it 
both ? There is almost nothing we conceive so 
variously, and unsteadily, and advance upon by ac 
many rectifications, even to the end of Mir. as this 
matter of character. •■ Xi-tds : " and by what kind of 
ssity : Is it in the sense that we have full capac- 
ity, which, in our | erversity 3 v^e will not nse? Or in 
the sense that we have no capacity '; Or that we have 
a receptive, or a partly receptive and partly :~:~~: 
capacity ? Do we need the change before believing, 
or after believing, or by and through believing ? 
- .£V> dial transformation" Here we have two figures 
dead enough to be packed together, and which yet. if 
they were less dead, could hardly be joined at all. 
One relates to what is inmost, viz.. to what is in the 
essence of a thing, and the other to what is outm st, 
the/brai of a thing. In what sense then essenti 
In what a transformation? In how many senses 
lighter and deeper san the words be taken: -Intt - 
post J influtnce:" first a word oi pose or position; 
secondly, a word of motion, or flow. And what is 



TO TIIE IMAGINATION. 271 

the inflow or influence, and what is it posited between? 
Th • I k>spel revelation by Christ's life and death is one 
mode of influence : the power of the spirit is another ; 
the power of sacraments another: the human exam- 
ple of Jr>us another. The influence maybe summed 
up in truth, or it may be God's direct agency one side 
of truth. Gould we but settle this one word influenet 
alone, about all the great church controversies of 
eighteen centuries would be settled. " From " : in 
what sense from ? Is it by God from without ? Or 
ly God within ? Is it by God directly, or by God 
medially, as in the Gospel 2 Or is it only from God 
as the source in whatever manner ? Xow I do not 
mean that, knowing who the author of this general 
proposition is. we have so many doubts about his 
meaning in it. but that, bringing to it all the beliefs 
and misbeliefs of the world and the age. we have all 
these and a full thousand other questions raised by 
it. In one view it may be true that it " educes light ; " 
at any rate there may be uses in a proposition thus 
generalized : and yet it was possible to be made, only 
because the words were staled in so many ambiguities. 
And all the terms of theology are under the same 
conditions. TTe think we are coming down, perhaps. 
on exajct statements; because we are coming down 
upon /words that forget their figures, land yet the 
propositions are all woven up in figures, and cover 
ambiguities only the more subtle that we do not see 
them. 

But we must have science, sume will remember ; 



272 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

is there any hope for theologic science left ? Xone at 
all. I answer most unequivocally. Human language 
is a gift to the imagination so essentially metaphoric, 

warp and woof, that it lias no exact blocks of mean- 
ing to build a science of. Who would ever think of 
building up a science of Homer, Shakespeare, Milton ? 
And the Bible is not a whit less poetic, or a whit 
less metaphoric. or a particle less difficult to be propo- 
sitionized in the terms of the understanding. Shall 
we then have nothing to answer, when the sweeping 
question is put. why philosophy and every other study 
should make advances, and theology be only spinning 
its old circles and revising and re-revising its old 
problems ? It must be enough to answer that philoso- 
phy, metaphysical philosophy, having only metaphor 
to work in, is under exactly the same limitation ; that 
it is always backing and filling, and turning and 
returning, in the same manner ; that nobody can 
name a single question that has ever been settled by 
all the systems it has built and the newly contrived 
nomenclatures it has invented. Working always in 
metaphors and fooling itself, how commonly, by meta- 
phor, it gets a valuable gymnastic in words, and pre- 
pares to a more full and many-sided conception of 
words. So far it is fruitful and good, and just so far 
also is the scientific labor of theology. After all it 
is simple insight in both, and not speculation, that 
has the true discernment. Words give up their deep- 
est, truest meaning, only when they are read as im- 
ages of the same. 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 273 

Bat we must have definitions, it will be urged, else 
we cannot be sure what we mean by our words, and 
when we have the definitions, why can we not have 
science ? But if we mean by definitions an exact 
literal measurement of ideas, no such thing is possi- 
ble. In what we call our definitions, whether in the- 
ology, or moral philosophy, we only put one set of 
metaphors in place of another, and, if we understand 
ourselves, there may be a certain use in doing it, even 
as there is in shifting our weight upon the other leg ; 
perhaps we make ourselves more intelligible by doing 
it. And yet there is a very great imposture lurking 
almost always in these definitions. Thus if I may 
define a definition, the very word shows it to be a 
bounding off ; where it happens, not unlikely, that a 
whole heaven's breadth of meaning is bounded out 
and lost ; where again, secondly, it results that the 
narrow part bounded in and cleared of all grand 
overplus of meaning, is just as much diminished as it 
is made more clear and certain; and thirdly, that 
what one has bounded out another will have bounded 
in, either in whole or in part ; whereupon debates 
begin, and schools and sects arise, clinging to their 
several half-truths and doing fierce battle for them. 
And probably another and still worse result will ap- 
pear ; for the generous broad natures that were going 
to be captivated by truth's free images, having them 
now defined and set in propositional statements, will, 
how often, be offended by their narrow theologic look 
and reject them utterly. Nothing makes infidels 
more surely than the spinning, splitting, nerveless 



27 ± OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

refinements of theology. This endeavor, always go- 
ing on, to get the truths of religion away from the 
imagination, into propositions of the speculative un- 
derstanding, makes a most dreary and sad history, — 
a history of divisions, recriminations, famishings. 
vanishings and general uncharitableness. Lively, full, 
fresh, free as they were, the definitions commonly cut 
off their wings and reduce them to mere pebbles of 
significance. Before they were plants alive and in 
flower, now the flavors are gone, the juices dried and 
the skeleton parts packed away and classified in the 
dry herbarium called theology. 

TTe deplore, how often, with how great concern, and 
with prayers to God in which we wrestle heavily, our 
manifold sects and divisions. "We turn the matter 
every way, contriving new platforms and better arti- 
cles of dogma, and commonly find that, instead of 
gathering ourselves into a new and more complete 
unity, we have only raised new sects and aggravated 
the previous distractions. And yet/many cannot con- 
ceive that the gospel is a faith, only in that way to be 
received, and so the bond of unhy\J They are going 
still to think out a gospel, assuming that the Church 
has no other hope as regards this matter but in the 
completing of a scientific theology ; which will proba- 
bly be accomplished about the same time that words 
are substituted by algebraic notations, and poetry 
reduced to the methods of the calculus or the loga- 
rithmic tables. There was never a hope wider of 
reason. The solar system will die before either that 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 275 

or the hope of a complete philosophy is accomplished. 

No, we must go back to words, and compose our dif- 
ferences in them as they are, exploring them more by 
our faith and less by our speculative thinking. Hav- 
ing them as a gift to the imagination, we must stay 
in them as such, and feel out our agreement there in 
a common trust, and love, and worship. 

See how it is with our two great schools or sects , 
called Calvinism and Arminianism. The points at 
issue in the propositional methods of their theology 
are forever unreconcilable. They stand over against 
each other like Gerizim and Ebal. And yet they 
have a perfect understanding when they pray together, 
because they pray their faith out through their im- 
aginative forms, and drop the word-logic forms of the 
Babel they before were building. 

Again, we have a grand fundamental and most 
practical truth that we call trinity ; Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, one God. These three images are God 
as delivered to the imagination, and the grammatic 
threeness in w^hich they stand is a truth in metaphor, 
even as the grammatic personalities are metaphoric 
and not literal persons ; and the God-idea, figured 
under these relativities, obtains, in the resulting mys- 
tery, the largest, freshest, liveliest impression possi- 
ble. In what manner, at what point, the unity and 
plurality meet, we may never know. TTe only know 
that the unity is absolute and eternal ; and the three- 
ness, either a necessary incident of God's revelations, 
or of his own self-conscious activities considered as 



:hi :t-t.i:::~ :•: ih^j :: ilzisiii; 
etemaL We also know that usin*r the 



^~t : .1- : kzL:-nr ii_;.i i>-_i_ t - "It ;^:: ::r:/- ;- 

apart, we have God is he is, and coalesce in 

him _ perfect mrifcy Bnt we cannot rest in 

- m - - b wiser; so we begin to speculate and 

iiiit ii :. ilnliiy Z"t — t i:i linn - - n? 

lin It :t-t_"t i 7 "It :r-= ill ~- ~~ - : l*i -.- 

hit : Ani — "hit ii'T ..-..-' ii -vi- i_5 . > :_::■ 
—ill Ti_ t - r: :i > --.- i._ iim - : -- li i: 

: r. :vi— i~ — : V; f i_. ~t ^ihii : : ili - r> 

?.:i_5 :n :i lii miiiiii:r-^r:rli 11 ni:i iiiei 
:._1 :.i t 1: iIt 1 :: : ; i_ — in iisiIhi-t niiliisii : n;i 
;.- " tI_i~- i: iziiy :.~. i_ t n~f _ i__ ~~ t _ t_ ii 

~t si 7 — t ii~i. In :_1 _ : -'iitt 15 : vi:.n i . ! 
ii J; in. lizifs. ml ?i:-r I'-f-r 1:1 



i :iin_. 
i := :li 
:1 ii 1t- 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 277 

prised to find, as he goes on to assert the Father, 
always the Father, under the type of a finite person- 
ality, that his God is gradually losing dimensions and 
growing smaller and smaller, even to worship itself^/ 
The three metaphoric persons were going, at once, to 
save God's personality and his magnitudes, by the 
maze and mystery created, but now they are gone, and 
the one finite personality left sinks everything with it 
to the ground ; so that one, and another, and another 
of the great authors in this key begin, spontaneously, 
to make up size for their deity, by speaking of the 
gods, and what is due the gods. How plain is it now 
that, if we all could take the scripture one and three, 
as given to the imagination, pouring in at that free 
gate to get our broadest possible knowledge of God, 
we should neither starve in the one, nor be distracted 
in the three, nor worried by controversy with each 
other as regards either one or three. 

So when we come to the person of Christ ; what he 
is to the imagination, as the express image of God, 
God thus manifest in the flesh, is everything ; what 
he is in his merely human personality, and how that 
personality is related to and unified with the divine 
nature, is nothing. All is easy when we take him for 
what of God is expressed in him ; but when we raise 
our psychologic problem in his person, insisting on 
finding exactly what and how much is in it, and how 
it is compacted, we are out of our limit, and our spec- 
ulation is only profane jangling. 

Exactly the same thing is true in respect to the 



278 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

metaphors of the altar, when applied to signify Christ's 
saving work and sacrifice. Take them as they rise in 
the apostolic teachings, God's figures for the men of 
old, in the time then present, and for us in the time now 
present ; then as facts of atoning, now as metaphors 
of the same ; and they will be full of God's meaning, 
we shall know ourselves atoned once for all by their 
power. But if we undertake to make a science out of 
them, and speculate them into a rational theory, it 
will be no gospel that we make, but a poor dry jargon 
rather ; a righteousness that makes nobody righteous, 
a justice satisfied by injustice, a mercy on the basis 
of pay, a penal deliverance that keeps on foot all the 
penal liabilities. All attempts to think out the cross 
and have it in dogmatic statement have resulted only 
in disagreement and distraction. And yet there is a 
remarkable consent of utterance, we plainly discover, 
when the cross is preached, as for salvation's sake, in 
the simple use of the scripture symbols taken all as 
figures for the time then present. 

Once more, even that most intractable and seemingly 
unreducible division, in which communion is broken 
across the mere form of Baptism, when there is an ad- 
mitted agreement and even ready acknowledgment in 
the living truth of experience, will at once be rectified 
by simply consenting to make due account of meta- 
phor. Nothing is more clear on the face of the rite 
than that it has its whole significance as a metaphor 4 
even as the Supper is a metaphor of hospitality. As 
a mere touch of the elements too in the Supper signi- 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 279 

tee metaphorically more than the gorging of a full 
meal, so the mere touch of that most pure, pure ele- 
ment, water, signifies practically more of the cleans- 
ing than a bowl, or a barrel, or a full bath. A sprin- 
kle of clean water makes clean, a washing of the feet 
makes clean every whit. Nothing then is wanted for 
communion here, but for every brother to know that 
every other holds and means a baptism in the figure 
of a cleansing by the Spirit. Peter the apostle was 
able to draw this matter of baptism to a still finer 
point. For as Noah's flood was the world's cleansing, 
he declares that " the like figure, even baptism [bap- 
tism was a figure, as we see, to him] doth also now 
save us." In that water voyage of Noah, there 
was baptism enough, in his view, to serve as the anal- 
ogon of salvation, though the particular point of the 
story was that, while the ark was sufficiently deluged 
with rain, Noah and his household were kept dry. I 
make nothing here of the burial figure, save that the 
cleansing itself imports a consecration in which there 
is, of course, a death to the world. Burials in water 
are not among human events. Will not our Baptist bro- 
therhood some time awake to their privilege, in the 
discovery, that they may rightly own as the baptized 
all such as have truly meant baptism, and signified 
the same faith with them in God's all-cleansing Spirit, — 
which is the all of baptism ? Go back here to the 
metaphor and keep that good, and nothing more is 
wanted, or can, without wrong, be required as the 
gospel condition of acknowledgment and unity. Noth- 



280 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

ing more will be required when the day of promised 
brotherhood and liberty arrives. 

Here then is the point on which all sects and divi- 
sions may be gravitating and coming into settled 
unity. What is wanted, above all things, for this end 
is not that we carefully compose our scientific theol- 
ogy, but that we properly observe, and are principally 
concerned to know God in his own appointed images 
and symbols. y We must get our light by perusing the 
faces of his truth ; we must behold him with reverent 
desire in the mirrors that reveal him, caring more to 
have our insight purged than to spin deductions and 
frame propositions that are in the modes of science or 
of system. We shall of course have opinions concern- 
ing it. A considerable activity in opinions is even 
desirable, because it will sharpen our perceptiveness 
of the symbols and draw us on, in that manner, to- 
wards a more general and perfect agreement. Only 
our opinions must be opinions, not laws, either to us 
or to anybody ; perhaps they will change color some- 
what even by to-morrow. We must also understand 
that our opinions or propositional statements are just 
as truly in metaphor as the scripture itself, only met- 
aphor probably which is a good deal more covert and 
often as much more ambiguous. We may draw as 
many creeds as we please, the more the better, if we 
duly understand that they are standards only as being 
in metaphor, and not in terms of exact notation. Xone 
the less properly standard is the Nicene Creed, that 
it is given visibly to the imagination, and has even its 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 281 

highest merit at the point where it takes on figure up 
to the degree of paradox : " God of God, Light of 
Light, Very God of Very God." Visibly absurd, im- 
possible, false to mere speculation, it is even the more 
sublimely, solidly true. There has never, in fact, been 
a dissent from it which did not take it away first from 
the imagination and give it to the notional under- 
standing. 

And yet there will be many who can see no possi- 
bility, taking this view of the Christian truth, of any 
thing solid left. We set every thing afloat, they will 
say ; nothing definite and fixed remains to be the 
base-work of a firm-set, stanchly effective gospel. 
/What is the Christian truth but a dissolving view of 
something to be known only by its shadows ? , But 
we are easily imposed upon here by whatTias no 
such value as we think. We commence our think- 
ing process at some point, we analyze, we deduce, 
we define, we construct, and when we have got- 
ten the given truth out of its scripture images into 
our own, and made an opinion or definited thing of 
it, we think we have touched bottom in it and feel 
a certain confidence of having so much now estab- 
lished. But the reason is, not that /we have made the 
truth more true, but that we have entered our own 
self-assertion into it in making an opinion or dogma 
of it, and have so far given a positivity to it that is 
from ourselves. /And yet, the real fact is exactly con- 
trary ; viz., that there is just as much less of solidity 
in it as there is more that is from ourselves. We take 



282 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

up, for example, the doctrine so-called of repentance, 
and we find a certain word representing it which 
means thinking over, changing the mind, and then 
we lay it down as the positive doctrine that repentance 
is forming a new governing purpose. That sounds 
very definite, quite scientific ; something we have now 
found that is clear and determinate. But it turns out, 
after a few years of preaching in this strain, that the 
truth we thought so solid is so inadequately true after 
all as not to have the value we supposed. As a 
merely one-figure doctrine it is of the lean-kine order, 
and we get no sense of breadth and body in the change 
defined, till we bring in all the other figures, the 
" godly sorrow," the " carefulness," the "self-clearing," 
the " indignation," the " fear," the " vehement desire," 
the " zeal," the " revenge," conceiving all these fruits 
to be from God's inward cogency working thus in us to 
will and to do. Now we take broad hold ; these are 
the solidities of a completely, roundly adequate concep- 
tion. 

We never so utterly mistake as when we attempt to 
build up in terms of opinion something more solid and 
decisively controlling, than what comes to us in the 
terms of the imagination ; that is, by metaphor. The 
Scriptures, we repeat how often, commend us to 
" sound doctrine," and assuming this to be the same 
as doctrine well speculated, we begin to magnify and 
breed sound doctrine after that fashion ; whereas, they 
only mean /sound-making, health-restoring j [hygeian] 
doctrine ; which is sure enough indeed to Keep good, 
because it is sure to be wanted, having always in it 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 283 

the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 
The most food-full doctrine is, in this view, the sound- 
est . Is there any theologic article or church confession 
more solid and fixedly standard-like in its ideas than 
the Psalms and the Prophets ? The parables of Christ, 
— what are they but images and figures visible given 
to the imagination 1 ) We turn them a thousand ways 
in our interpretations, it may be, but we revere them 
none the less and hold them none the less firmly, that 
they are rich enough to justify this liberty. A partic- 
ular one of them in fact, the parable of the prodigal 
son, is even a kind of; pole-star in the sky of the 
gospel, kbout which formulas, and creeds, and confes- 
sions, are always revolving in ephemeral changes, 
while that abides and shines. Again there is nothing, 
as we all are wont to feel, that is more solid than our 
heavenly state, and we call it, in that view, the city 
that hath foundations. And yet we have no formula 
that defines it, and no single word of description for 
it that is not confessedly a figure. It is a garden, a 
tabernacle, a bosom of Abraham, a new Jerusalem, a 
city of God cubically built on stones that are gems. 
If then, nothing is solid, as some will be ready to 
judge, that is representable only in terms of the imag- 
ination, our hopes are all afloat in the sky, or on the 
air, and our heaven is but a phantom-state which, 
determinately speaking, is just nowhere and nothing. 
And yet we do not think so. No Christian^ man or 
woman has any such misgiving. Again, (why is it 
that no dogmatic solution of the cross, solid enough 



284 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 

to hold the faith of the world, has ever yet been made, 
while the gospel figures of it are accepted always, 
rested in and regarded as the pillar of all comfort and 
hope 1j 

Glancing for just a moment at one or two more 
strictly human illustrations, what utterance of mortal 
mind, in what scheme of theology or church confes- 
sion, has ever proved its adamantine property as 
fixedly as the Apostles' Creed ? And yet there is not a 
single word of opinion or speculated wisdom in it. It 
stands wholly in figure, or what is no wise different, 
in facts that were given to be figure. But if there is 
any realm of central, astronomic order, it has been 
this fact-form, truly Copernican confession, about 
which all the orbits of all the saints, have, in all ages, 
been revolving. 

Summon again for comparison two such masters of 
doctrine as Turretin and Bunyan ; one a great expoun- 
der in the school of dogma, and the other a teacher 
by and before the imagination. Which of these shall 
we say is the more solid and immovably fixed in 
authority? The venerable dogmatizer is already far 
gone by, and will ere long be rather a milestone of 
history than a living part of it. His carefully squared 
blocks of opinion and the theologic temple he built of 
them for all ages to come are already time-worn, 
crumbling visibly away, like the stones of Tyre, and 
as if the burden of Tyre were upon them. But* the 
glorious Bunyan fire still burns, because it is fire, 
kindles the world's imagination more and more, and 



TO THE IMAGINATION. 285 

claims a righl to live till the sun itself dies out in the 
sky. His Pilgrim holds on his way still fresh and 
strong as ever, nay, fresher and stronger than ever, 
never to be put off the road till the last traveler 
heavenward is conducted in. And yet he saw before- 
hand that he was likely to be considered a very light 
kind of teacher, and bespoke more patience than some 
could think he deserved. 

' 'But must I needs want solidness, because 

By metaphors I speak ? Were not God's laws, 

His gospel laws, in olden time, set forth, 

By Shadows, Types, and Metaphors ? Yet loth 

Will any sober man be to find fault 

With them, lest he be found for to assault 

The highest Wisdom ! No, he rather stoops, 

And seeks to find out, by what 'Pins,' and 'Loops,' 

By 'Calves,' and 'Sheep,' by 'Heifers,' and by 'Rams,' 

By 'Birds,' and 'Herbs,' and by the blood of 'Lambs,' 

God speaketh to him ; and happy is he 

That finds the Light and Grace that in them be." 



IX. 

POPULAR GOVERNMENT BY DIVINE EIGHT* 



Jer. 30:21. And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their 
governor shall proceed from the midst of them ; and I will cause 
him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me : for who is this 
that engaged his heart to approach unto me? saith the Lord. 

Taken, as by the sound, these words appear to be a 
kind of American Scripture ; and still more, when 
the notably English word " nobles " is substituted, as 
it should be in correct translation, by the singular 
word chief or leader. Then the declaration is that 
God will now be united to their chief or governor, so 
that while he is one of the people, — exalted, or called 
from among themselves, — he shall consciously and 
even visibly rule by a divine sanction. In the restora- 
tion at hand, it shall not, in other words, be as it was 
before, when the kings and captains of the land were 
so often idolaters, or infidels, but the discipline the 
people have had in their bitter captivity shall have 
brought them and their rulers in, at last, to God, 

* Delivered on the day of the National Thanksgiving, Nov. 24, 
1864, in the South Church, Hartford, before the congregations 
of that and the South Baptist Church. 

(286) 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 287 

and given to their government a crowning authority 
under religious ideas and sentiments. "And their 
chief shall be of themselves, and their governor shall 
proceed Erom the midst of them; and I will cause 
him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me; for 
who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto 
me ? saith the Lord " ; — who, that is, but me, by my 
own strong Providence in their captivity, and the 
restoration now of their lately broken country and 
government ? 

Just as we ourselves, in this dreadful war-struggle 
by which we are trying to vindicate and establish our 
shattered unity, have our public feeling itself so visi- 
bly tempered by religion, and have it even as a pleas- 
ure, in our proclamations, dispatches, and speeches, to 
submit ourselves, in homage and trust, to the sacred 
name and Providential rule of God. Just as now, 
for the first time, we issue a religious coin, with the 
motto : " In God we trust." Just as many too of our 
countrymen, dissatisfied with the irreligious or, at 
least, unreligious accident, by which our Constitution 
omits even the mention of God, began a year ago, and 
this day are again assembled in Philadelphia, to ad- 
vocate the memorializing of Congress for an amend- 
ment, among others, to the Constitution, that shall 
make some fit acknowledgment of God and of the 
fact that human government stands in true authority 
only when it rules in the emphasis of religious senti- 
ments and sanctions. 

What, I propose, accordingly, on the present occa- 
sion, is to follow the train of suggestion started by 



288 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

the words of the prophet, showing especially this; 
that popular governments, or such as draw out their 
magistracies by election from among the people them- 
selves, are not likely to be completed at the first, but 
have commonly to be completed historically afterward, 
and get their moral crowning of authority by a pro- 
cess of divine discipline more or less extended. How 
this process works, in our own case, it will be my 
endeavor to show. And I hope to make it appear, to 
the satisfaction of you all, that we are now come to 
the final establishment of our government in those 
religious sentiments and ideas, which are at once the 
deepest bases and highest summits of a genuine 
state authority. This, I think, we shall discover and 
even thankfully accept, as being the true meaning of 
the present awful chapter of our history. No people 
of the world were ever sheltered under institutions so 
genial and benign as ours. They have yielded us 
blessings of freedom and security hitherto, which no 
nation of mankind has ever enjoyed in the same de- 
gree. But our sense of allegiance, or civic obligation 
under these institutions, we have always felt and now 
more than ever perceive, has hitherto been thin and 
flashy ; as if they were, after all, inventions only of 
man and not the ordinance of God. What more 
stunning evidence could we have than the fact of this 
horrid rebellion, — a whole third of the nation renounc- 
ing their allegiance, even as by right, without so much 
as an apparent thought of crime ! In this view let us 
welcome God's process of training and see if we can 
trace it. 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 289 

Before proceeding, however, with the more direct 
matter of our inquiry, let us first glance a moment at 
the philosophic foundations of government, that we 
may clear a way for the exposition of fact that is to 
follow. 

The more deeply we consider this matter of civil 
government, the more nearly impossible it will be, on 
mere grounds of philosophy, to construct a govern- 
ment without some reference to a Supreme Being. 

Thus if we say that the law is to be grounded in 
right, right is a moral idea, at whose summit stands 
God, as the everlasting vindicator of right. If we 
imagine that mere enforcements will create obligation, 
apart from any moral consideration whatever, we have 
only to observe that when statutes are enforced by 
fines, no good citizen is satisfied because, having 
broken the statute, he has paid the fine. Enforce- 
ments create fear but never obligation. True obliga- 
tion towers above all enforcements. No touch of it 
is ever felt, till the subject hears the state, unseen 
yet somehow divine, commanding through the laws 
enacted. 

If we imagine that the human will of magistrates 
may somehow create law and wield authority, what 
do we find, in every real government, but that the 
magistrates themselves are as truly bound by the laws 
as the private subjects are ; and the insensible, corpo- 
rate, everywhere electric presence of the state will 
have magistrates and people all alike submitted to it, 
as the instrumentalities and objects of its sway ? 



290 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

How plain is it, too, that civil obligation takes hold 
of the conscience, whenever it is truly fastened upon 
the subjects of government ! And what is the con- 
science, but that summit of our nature where it 
touches God ? 

Nor is it any objection that the subjects of many 
real governments are idolaters and have no rational 
conception of God. Enough that their conscientious 
obligations under law will reach higher than their 
understanding, accepting with implicit and potential 
homage the Being whom, as yet, they do not think or 
know. 

Regarding the state then as having a legitimate 
and proper right of government only when it is a 
factor, so to speak, in the Divine Government itself, 
it becomes a very considerable question, when it may 
be so considered. I cannot undertake, of course, to 
settle all the difficult points of casuistry that may 
here be raised. I am not required to show whether 
the governments in Poland, France, and Mexico are 
the ordinance of God, nor whether the governments 
of Charles I. and Louis XVI. have ceased to be. It 
must be enough that government, in the ordinary con- 
dition of mankind, is universal, just as gravity is 
universal in matter. And as gravity is just as real 
and practically the same to them that do not know it, 
as to them that do, so is God's ordinance of govern- 
ment the same to them who only have it by impression, 
as to them who have it by knowledge or opinion. The 
real fact is that we have a nature configured inwardly 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 291 

to the civil slate, and arc, in fact, civil-society crea- 
tures. We do not even conceive the possibility of 
living- without government. We fly to it, even the 
world over, as the necessary shelter of our life. It 
may be this or that, it may be in the chieftain of a 
clan or tribe, it may be a wild, ungenial, or even a 
bloody and barbaric absolutism ; be it what it may, the 
civil-society nature invests it with a gloomy and blind 
sovereignty, and bows to it as to some higher kind of 
being, closer to God or the gods. And so the world 
is parceled off, in all ages, into governments in the 
most incongruous and grotesque as well as the most 
august shapes, yet all alike, with only here and there 
an exception, received with unquestioning homage, and 
bearing rule in acknowledged right and authority. 

Furthermore, as civil government is one of the 
greatest interests of mankind, there is either no such 
thing as Providence, or else it must also be one of the 
principal cares of Providence. And it will almost 
always be felt that the government in power is in 
such a sense historic, that it could not well be different 
from what it is. In that view it will be accepted as a 
kind of Providential creation. And this is very 
specially true of our own. It was not necessary for 
God to give it authority by saying from the sky : 
" This is from me." Enough that if we do not hear 
the voice, we feel the hand. First, there is given us a 
beginning here, in provinces, or colonies, hereafter to 
be called states. We are set crystallizing, as such, in 
the bosom of the common law. of _England, receiving, 



292 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

in that manner, all the great principles of right and 
liberty that are the heritage of Englishmen. Next, we 
are cut off from all distinctions of blood, which might 
give us a possible king and nobility. And so, when 
we came to institute a frame of government we were 
literally cornered into just the government we have. 
We must be states and also the United States. We 
had, in fact, the name upon us before we spoke it, and 
the Constitution in us before we saw it on paper. 
The Philadelphia Convention did scarcely more, in 
fact, than draw out the constitution already framed by 
Almighty God in the historic cast of our nation itself. 
We do not all say this or see it ; many of us do not 
see distinctly any thing, but that certain men asserted 
certain magic formulas, which are conceived to have 
done everything for us. Still we have the feeling, all 
of us, that we have just the government that belongs 
to us : which is, in fact, the same thing as a feeling 
that it is the creature of God's Providence. Moral 
and religious ideas come slow and arrive late, but 
what we have had implicitly as a feeling is now, I 
trust, to be felt more distinctly, and even formally 
thought and acknowledged. 

Leaving now these generalities behind us, we go on 
to sketch the process by which our American govern- 
ment is to be thus consummated and to become a full- 
toned, proper government, under moral and religious 
ideas. I call it a process; and as every such process 
advances by crises, not by an imperceptible growth, 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 293 

there appear to have been three such crises that must 
needs be passed. Let us note them in their order; 
first, the two that are already passed, and then the 
third, which we are passing now. 

First, we have the stage of self-assertion or declared 
Independence, in which our new state of order began. 
It was no single champion that got us in his power and 
fought us into separation, to be the prize of his own 
chieftainship. That would have inaugurated a mon- 
archy or absolute government, not a free and popular 
government. vVe undertook, as a people, just opposite 
to this, to champion our own right and assume a new 
civil condition for ourselves. And this we should 
naturally do, by reverting to principles conceived to 
be most fixed and absolute. To separate was to rebel, 
and rebellion could stand by no mere argument of 
liking, or convenience, or interest, or passion. TVe 
began thus to conceive that we had certain inborn 
natural rights, and very soon also to maintain them 
by a stiff and sturdy assertion ; sometimes, it would 
seem, by a considerable over-assertion. 

In some cases, our leaders had been considerably 
affected by the political theories of Rousseau and 
other French infidel writers, who began at the point 
of what they called nature and natural right in men, 
contriving how civil society might arise, and could 
only arise lawfully, by their consent, or compact, or 
vote, and the surrender of their individual rights, to 
make up the public stock of powers and prerogatives 



294 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

in the state. In other cases and parts, we had been 
shaped historically by our popular training in the 
church, and the little democracies of our towns and 
colonial legislatures, and so had become ready, as the 
others, to make a large assertion of our inborn, sacred 
rights and liberties. As a natural result, the two 
schools flowed together, coalescing in the same 
declarations of right, and the same impeachments of 
wrong, followed by the assertion of a common inde- 
pendence. 

In this manner, without any very nice considera- 
tion of our meaning, or precisely defined criticism of 
our principles, we bolted on the world in our famous 
July declaration. The pressure of the time was too 
close to allow any very deliberate measurement of 
ideas. Appealing thus to " the laws of nature and 
of nature's God," we declare it " to be self-evident 
that all men are created equal," — a very much easier 
thing to say, than to show wherein they are equal, or 
that simply created men, born into no social and civil 
distinctions, have any where existed, since the time 
of the creation, — also, that " they are endowed, by 
their Creator, with inalienable rights," to secure which 
" governments are instituted, deriving their just 
powers from the consent of the governed." And so 
we have New England and Virginia, Puritan church 
order and the doctrine of the French Encyclopedia, 
fused happily together in the language of Mr. Jeffer- 
son, and the " Creator " and his friends are duly hon- 
ored by admission to a considerable place in a really 



BY DIVINE EIGHT. 205 

atheistic bill or doctrine. Our new political order 
which is older, in fact, than this document, is yet 
chronologically born of it, — though not, in any sense, 
of the matter of this preamble. This is not the sober 
tact of our history, but only the paradise of the July 
orators. 

Far be it from me to satirize this very dear chapter 
of our nationality. The doing was grand, but the 
doctrine of the doing was eminently crude, as Mr. 
Jefferson very well knew how to be. In a certain 
possible sense it was true, but in the sense in which 
it is commonly understood it can only operate and 
has always operated destructively ; working as a kind 
of latent poison against all government from the first 
day until now, as we shall by and by see. 

The true merit of this document, for merit enough 
it has, lies in the bill of facts and grievances stated 
afterwards, not in the matter of the preamble. Proba- 
bly some of these facts are a good deal exaggerated, 
but we may take them all together, and sum them up 
in a single inclusive impeachment, which is true 
beyond debate and amply sufficient ; viz., that the 
British mother country was holding us only as prov- 
inces to be farmed for her own uses, and not with any 
thought of benefit to us; keeping us for trade and 
taxation, and place, and office, giving us no voice in 
the parliament, and permitting us, in fact, no future. 
Exactly this too, was what every American felt ; this 
was the real grievance that stung our people, and that 
sting was God's inspiration in their bosoms. And 



296 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

now, what living man, having simply reason for his 
attribute, will imagine that God's high Providence 
could have meant this vast, almost continental region 
of the new world to be, for all time, the mere con- 
venience and farmhold subserviency of a little patch 
of island three thousand miles away ! We talk about 
the right of revolution and puzzle ourselves much in 
that kind of question. There is certainly no such 
right in government itself, or under government; 
which is the really new doctrine asserted in what is 
called the right of secession. If there is any right of 
revolution at all it is a right against government that 
is really no government ; and it cannot stumble any 
one to admit that such a right exists. Be that as it 
may, we undertook no proper revolution of the mother 
country, but leaving all her laws and magistracies still 
standing as before, we simply assert the right to be, 
and have a future ourselves. The real fact was that 
we had the momentum, in our feeling, of too vast a 
future, and slung away the British king and parlia- 
ment just because they undertook to be the centre of 
gravity for us, even as an asteroid might for the sun. 
Weight of being, — here is the real argument, — weight 
of being began to be felt here, and the laws of pro- 
portion, consciously or unconsciously working in us, 
threw us into separation, as it were by the laws of 
arithmetic, or what is not far different, by the sen- 
tence of God. We revolted transcendentally, for rea- 
sons deeper than we conceived ; such as we could only 
feel. The case was peculiar. There hac been many 



BY DIVINE BIGHT. l', 

'lutions : aever before, that I know, a separation 
ific gravity. 
Bad we been able to conceive the matter in this 
way. at the time, it would have saved us the necessity 
of, alas ! how many pernicious nostrums, accepted 
from that time onward as maxims even of political 
philosophy. There was no need of adverting to some 
original, barely created, ante-civil equality, as the 
paradise of all true right and reason ; contriving, with 
Rousseau, how we gave up. by consent, these primal 
honors of equality, and surrendered this and that 
natural right, to make up a pool of endowment large 
enough for the outfit of a government. We never 
had. as individual men. any one such right to surren- 
der, — no right to legislate, make arrest, imprison 
other men. try them, enforce contracts, investigate 
titles, punish frauds and wrong doings. Governments 
have such rights because we have them not. and we 
have them not en the ground that governments have 
them for us. And governments are as old as we. We 
are not born sole men or monads, afterwards if we 
can to come into society and manufacture govern- 
ment from below. We are born into civil society as 
we are into the atmosphere: we were already born 
into British civil society and became legitimate sul> 
jects of it : this too. with as little right of consent as 
whether we should be born at all. The only question 
was whether, having been grown as a seed in the cap- 
sule of that stem, we had a right to get ripe and let 
go connection, so to become a stem by ourselves. No 



298 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

greater fiction is conceivable, than that we fell back 
in our act of separation from the mother country 
upon an original equality, to give up a part of the 
same by compact, and so become a state. It is very 
true that we are all equally human, equally en- 
titled, in the right of our inborn conscience and 
eternity, to the best possible chances of intelli- 
gence and character. But if we undertake to 
assert that we are all, by nature, equally entitled to a 
government by consent, and to count one in the public 
suffrage of such a government, it may be very well 
for us, Americans, that it is so ; better, in fact, than 
any thing else ; but I know not where there is any 
such universal principle. A born magistracy, however 
unequal, be it kingly, or noble, is good without con- 
sent, if only it rule well. What can be more preposte- 
rous for us, or a conceit more fatal to our moral 
sobriety, than to assume that there is no legitimate 
government in the world and never has been, to the 
present hour, but our own, in the principle forsooth 
that all governments " derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed?" No such consent, 
whether express or implied, was ever a fact. It never 
has been, even with us. Our own original constitu- 
tions were made, in general, by the votes of property- 
holders. Minors and women, that is a full two-thirds 
of our people, are excluded still from any such con- 
sent, and, what is more, forbidden even the right of 
dissent. We male citizens too, of the living genera- 
tion, have never, in fact, had the opportunity of con- 



BY DIVINE BIGHT. 299 

sent to the United States' government; and how little 
any such consent may signify, we plainly see, in the 
fact that the laws are, at this very moment, fighting 
down with sword and gunpowder, whole sections of 
country that have been protesting many years against 
its sovereignty. They are going to be governed, we 
still say, but where is their consent? Alas, had no 
such half-principle, or no-principle of consent been 
asserted, how different might our condition be ! 

Furthermore, it is a remarkable fact that, after this 
rather high sounding appeal to supposed foundation 
principles of government, in many cases we did not 
organize any new government whatever, but went on 
generally with the old state governments, just as they 
were, only declaring them to be "Independent States." 
We did not even declare ourselves to be a nation. 
Neither did we, in fact, organize a nation. The Ar- 
ticles of Confederation were only a machine contrived 
to make the states work together ; a harness and not 
a Constitution. There was a Congress and the Con 
gress had a President, or presiding officer, but there 
was no President of the republic ; no supreme court, 
no criminal code, and no right of criminal proceeding ; 
no right of taxation or impost, save by the states ; no 
law, in fact, which directly touched the person of any 
citizen ; nothing but a right to get men and means for 
the common purposes, by requisitions on the states, 
where the congress voted only by states, — each state, 
great and small alike, having a single and, of course, 
equal vote. And even then the vote had no compel- 



300 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

ling sanction ; it was simply an appeal to the good 
faith of the states. What, in this view, had become 
of the ultimate principles announced, with so great 
philosophic pretension, in the preamble of the declar- 
ation ! 

It was something, doubtless, that the states were 
independent states, but we had, as yet, no common 
government ; for the confederation was only a league, 
and not, in any sense, a government. But the gov- 
ernments, that is, the states, went on bravely together, 
and fought the battle finally through, held together 
firmly by the outside pressure of the war. Then came 
the day of trial. As soon as the outside pressure was 
gone, the loose-jointed machinery of the league began, 
at once, to fall apart. The states laid impost duties 
in their own right ; they often gave no heed to the 
requisitions of the congress, killing them as it were by 
simple silence ; the public credit gave way ; the paper 
money lost value ; the common devotion grew slack, 
collapsing in blank apathy and hopeless discourage- 
ment. Whoever looks over the sad picture given by 
Mr. Hamilton, in the Federalist, will see that a com- 
plete lapse, under atrophy and final extinction, was 
close at hand. 

This brings me to the second stage or crisis in the 
process of our advance towards a complete govern- 
ment, that, viz., which we passed in the organization 
of our National Constitution. Here the effect is, 
though it is not commonly so stated, to drop the mere 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 301 

machine, or harness of common working for the states, 
and create or institute a proper government for them. 
Before, the states were sovereign, and were not sub- 
jects at all, in the sense of being under government. 
There is now to be a power created that can move, 
without moving solely through states ; the new gov- 
ernment is to have a new order of subjects, viz., the 
people themselves ; holding them in terms of direct 
allegiance to itself. " The great and radical vice," says 
Mr. Hamilton, " in the construction of the [then] ex- 
isting Confederation, is in the principle of legislation for 
states or governments, in their corporate, or collective 
capacities, as contra-distinguished from individuals." 
(Federalist, Xo. XY.) And, again, " We must incor- 
porate into our plan those ingredients that may be con- 
sidered as forming the characteristic difference between 
a league and a government, and must extend the author- 
ity of the Union to the persons of the citizens, the only 
proper objects of government." (Federalist, Xo. XY.) 

Hence the Constitution ; wherein we get a President 
or National Chief Magistrate, a right of impost general, 
of taxation, of military levy, of Courts of Admiralty 
and a criminal jurisdiction, a Supreme Court with a 
right of appeal from the state courts, arraignments 
for treason, every thing that belongs to the highest 
functions of a supreme government. 

Now there begins to be a ring of authority and 
decisive obligation in the civil order of the Republic. 
The people feel the contact now of its laws, and rejoice 
in the sense of a new born nationality. I need not 



302 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

sketch the picture ; sufficient to say, that no people 
of the earth were ever before as free, and secure, and 
prosperous, and happy. Our progress, accordingly, 
even astonished ourselves. A national feeling, too, 
was growing up. silently and imperceptibly to our- 
selves, and the state feeling was subsiding into a 
more nearly domestic or household sentiment. Both 
kinds of allegiance are dear to us, but the higher 
allegiance raises a higher devotion : even as the flag 
which represents it everywhere, in every sea and clime 
and field of common battle, becomes a symbol more 
significant and sacred than the flags of the states. 
The states, too, have consented knowingly to have it 
so. They had rights of government as individuals 
never had, and it is matter of indubitable and sober 
history that they did surrender certain very eminent 
rights, to endow the prerogatives of the general gov- 
ernment. And to make it a sacrifice more free, and 
give the act a greater solemnity, the People of the 
States, in place of the State Legislatures, themselves 
voted the surrender. And so it results that the states 
are governments in virtue of their reserved rights, 
and the State General or nation is a government in 
virtue of its contributed rights. Both are sovereign 
in their sphere ; both govern as final authorities. Only 
it results, of course, that the General Government is 
a higher and more eminent sovereignty, according to 
the more eminent powers of peace, and war, and final 
appeal, that are given it. 

Still there is a weak spot here, and it was growing 



BY DIVINE BIGHT. 303 

weaker f<n- a long time, till finally, four years ago the 
i was broken asunder. This weak spot and final 
break of order began at what is called "the State 
Rights doctrine" of Mr. Calhoun. He takes ground 
here exactly opposite to Mr. Hamilton and the Feder- 

f, maintaining still "that there is no immediate 
communication between the individual citizens of a 
state and the general government. The relation be- 
tween them is through the state.'' (Letter to Gov. 
Hamilton.) This being true, the governmental 
function proper, viz., that of authority to hind the 
private wills and consciences of personal subjects, falls 
to the ground, and nothing, after all. is really gained 
by the Constitution. Still we have no government as 
before, but only a league. 

The claim of Mr. Calhoun is perfectly unhistorical 
and against even the letter of the Constitution beside. 
Has the man who wants a patent for his new inven- 
tion or a copyright for his book, no immediate rela- 
tion to the general government ? Has the smuggler, 
the counterfeiter of national bills and coins, the per- 
petrator of treason, the suitor of one state claiming 
dues of the citizens of another. — have none of these, 
and ten thousand others, expressly provided for in the 
Constitution, no relation to the general government 
except through the state ? 

It is very true that the preamble of the Constitution 
reads : •• We, the people of the United States ordain 
and establish," and it is also true that they voted the 
Constitution by states. All the more proper was it 



304 POPULAE GOVERNMENT 

that the legislatures had never been appointed to sur- 
render, but only to administer, the State Rights. 
These rights, in fact, could only be conclusively and 
absolutely surrendered, just as in fact they were, by 
the people's vote. It is also true, as Mr. Calhoun so 
pertinaciously insists, that the surrendering party will 
naturally expect to be judges themselves of what they 
have surrendered. And so too, will the party receiv- 
ing the surrender. And then whose judgment will be 
strongest in effect, and uppermost in prerogative, that 
of a little, turbulent, uneasy state faction, or that of a 
great nation having all its mighty concerns of benefit 
and blessing embarked in the general unity ? It is 
very true that the great nation thus constituted may 
usurp to itself powers never granted, just as the small 
state may factiously deny or reclaim powers that have 
been granted. And if it be hard upon the small state 
when it is oppressed in this manner by the nation, it 
might also be hard upon a much vaster scale, if the 
general order of the nation were compelled to submit 
itself to the bramble judgment of a factious little 
state and consent after all to be a nation only by 
sufferance. It must be enough for the states that 
exactly this kind of risk was submitted to by them, 
in their vote of surrender, and that no such eminent 
sovereignty could be created without a consent to the 
risk. The judgment of the stronger and superior 
party must prevail. Otherwise, if every state has a 
right to decide peremptorily on what she has surren- 
dered, she has in fact surrendered nothing. In that 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 305 

simple righl asserted, goes down the whole mighty 
fabric so carefully built, and the sublime fathers and 
founders have their fool's errand revealed by the dis- 
covery that the mere whim or conceit of a faction 
has even the right to shiver all their work in pieces ! 

But the root of Mr. Calhoun's famous state rights 
speculation was not, after all, in the Constitution, as 
he persistently claimed ; it was deeper than he even 
knew himself ; viz., in the fact that he had received, 
with such implicit trust, the spurious brood of false 
maxims that began early to be hatched by our new 
theories of liberty, and took them into his very life 
with such unquestioning facility, that, without being 
at all aware of it, he had not even the conception of 
government left. My words are carefully measured 
when I say this. I have made exploration of his 
writings, with this very point in view, and I do not 
anywhere find that he has the conception of a real 
government, or of anything higher than a league. 
Indeed he testifies, in fact, himself that he has not. 
Thus he writes : (Letter to Gov. Hamilton) " accord- 
ing to our theory, governments are in their nature 
trusts, and those appointed to administer them, [that 
is, the magistrates,] trustees, or agents, to execute trust 
powers. The sovereignty resides elsewhere, in the 
people, not in the government." What kind, now, of 
government is that which has no sovereignty in itself, 
and is under a sovereignty residing elsewhere ? And 
then what kind of government there is in a mere trus- 
teeship, where, as he continually insists, the trust may 



306 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

at any time be revoked by the principal, as in common 
law, will be seen at a glance. And if any of us should 
imagine that he is speaking thus only of the general 
government, let it be observed, that he says, " govern- 
ments " in the plural ; showing that he has no con- 
ception of a government even in the states which is 
more than a trust, terminable at will, and having no 
real sovereignty ! 

Now in this wretched figure of statesmanship, you 
perceive that he only takes up what he conceives to 
be the accepted doctrine of the country, yielding him- 
self to it with unquestioning trust ; for he says, not 
" according to my theory," but " according to our 
theory." And he had a good right to that kind of 
reference. What have our orators and public men 
been saying and repeating for these many years, but 
what Mr. Jefferson began to say at the first, — that 
" government has no right but in the consent of the 
governed ; " that " all the powers of magistracy are 
delegated powers ; " that " the people are sovereign ; " 
that " self-government is the inherent right of states ; " 
that " the people are the spring of all authority ; " 
that " the will of the people is the highest law ; " — 
going on thus, without limit, in the ring of as many 
thousand changes, as our one miserably ambiguous 
and mischievously untrue maxim will permit ! Even 
such a writer as Mr, Hamilton, wanting above all 
things a government, was so far taken, unwittingly, by 
this kind of chaff, as to say : " The fabric of American 
empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 307 

of the people. The streams of national power 
ought to flow immediately from that pure, original, 
fountain of all legitimate authority." (Federalist, 
XXII.) So generally prevalent, in short, and so 
unquestioningly received is this kind of maxim, that 
I run a considerable risk of parting company with 
this audience, if I do not explain what 1 mean by dis- 
sent from it. 

I dissent from it then, because it affirms the possi- 
bility of making a real government over man by man ; 
a government, that is, without ascending into the 
region of moral and religious ideas, or going at all 
above the mere wills of voters. As if any forty thou- 
sand, or forty million wills, taken as mere wills, could 
have any, the least right to command, or set obliga- 
tion upon my will. According to our scheme of 
order under the Constitution, these forty millions of 
wills may, by their suffrage, choose the magistrates, 
and that, for us Americans, may be the best scheme 
possible, the ordinance even of God ; but it does not 
follow that the binding authority of such magistrates 
is carried over into them by distillation, or transfer, 
out of the wills of the people. They only designate, 
by vote, the men who are to be magistrates, just as 
they are designated by birth in other countries ; and 
their oath before God and God's ordinance in the Con- 
stitution make them more than simply designated 
men ; viz., magistrates, with authority to bind. 

Such is the general account to be made of our pop- 
ular elective function as related to government, or to 



308 POPULAR GOYEBXMEXT 

magisterial right and authority. And all the thou- 
sand axioms we repeat, as our political confession, are 
in this way easily reduced to the small residuum of 
truth that belongs to them. 

Thus, if we say with Mr. Calhoun, that " govern- 
ment is a trust." it is very true that the voters signify 
a trust in the men when they vote for them : and so 
does the woman signify a trust in the man. when she 
becomes his wife, but it does not follow that her act 
of trust makes him an agent and herself his princi- 
pal, with a right to recall his trusteeship when she 
pleases. She passes over no husbandship by her trust : 
and as little does the voter pass over a magistracy : 
neither one nor the other has any such functional 
right to pass. To reason with Mr. Calhoun that 
wherever there is a trust, that is. a confidence exer- 
cised, there is of course a legal trusteeship, is only to 
play with words without distinguishing their meaning. 
Even God himself would, in this manner, be only our 
trustee and we his principals. 

So of •• the sovereignty of the people." of which 
we hear so often. In our scheme of order, the people 
are certainly arbiters in the matter of election or 
designation. And so. if the magistrates were desig- 
nated by lot. a lottery ^rheel or wheel of fortune 
might be : but shall we all begin therefore to say that 
the sovereignty is in the wheel, assuming it too for a 
universal axiom that wheels are inherently sovereign 
in states ? If we only mean by the sovereignty of the 
people, that, in our particular scheme, nobody gets 



BY DIVINE BIGHT. 309 

into place save by the popular vote, that is very well; 
a grand distinction of our system, and a sheet anchor 
of security tor our liberties. Still the magistrate is 
sovereign over the people, not they over him. having 
even a divine right to bind their conscience by his 
rule. 

In the same way. we are to interpret all we have to 
say of - self-government," or k - the right of self-gov- 
ernment." " By nature." says Mr. Calhoun, following 
after Mr. Jefferson, " every individual has a right to 
govern himself." deducing then all true right in gov- 
ernment from the right of self-government in the 
individual. He does not see that the word he plays 
upon changes meaning, that, by self-government in a 
person, we mean simply self-keeping, or self-restrain- 
ing, and suppose no such thing as command or 
authority at all. unless it be in God. whose all-gov- 
erning law we are simply restraining ourselves to keep. 
Our particular people do, indeed, choose their magis- 
trates, and then, not governing the magistrates, the 
magistrates govern them. Just so near they come 
to self-government as — not to touch it. 

"We deceive ourselves again by a like imposture of 
language, when we say : u that magistrates have only 
delegated powers." Doubtless they are in by election, 
but there is no passing over of powers in the vote. 
Not one of the supposed powers was ever in the per- 
>"ii> of the voters, or by any possibility could be. 
They are all from the Constitution, the sanction of 
- Head Magistracy going with it. 



810 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

You perceive, in this manner, how we have been 
taking down all magistracy from the first by trying to 
get up authority from below, that is, out of man him- 
self. Our very axioms go for the destruction of mag- 
istracy ; ignoring always the fact so grandly and even 
philosophically put by an apostle, when he says : 
" there is no power but of God." There was never a 
finer way of government for a people than God has 
given us, and the special grounds of personal security 
we have in our equal suffrage, and the choosing of 
our own magistrates, are the admirable distinctions 
we may fitly value and cherish. Still the whole 
shaping of the fabric is Providential. God , God is in 
it, everywhere. He is Founder before the founders, 
training both them and us, and building in the Con- 
stitution before it is produced without. Our whole 
civil order is the ordinance of God saturated all 
through with flavors of historic religion, sanctioned 
every way by the sanction, and sanctified by the in- 
dwelling concourse of God. This it is that crowns 
the summit of our magistracies, and is going to give 
us finally the most sacredly binding, most indissoluble 
government in the world. 

But as yet we have not come to this. For a long 
time we have been trying, as it were, to shake off 
Providence and law together, and we have so far suc- 
ceeded that even the conception of government was 
beginning to be a lost conception. Perhaps these 
nostrums of atheistic philosophy must needs reveal 
what is in them before they can be duly corrected. 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 311 

The conceit must be taken out of us, enough to stop 
us iii asserting, for axioms, doctrines that impugn the 
right of all governments in the world beside ; recoil- 
ing by a most fit retribution, that takes away even the 
idea of government as for ourselves. Be this as it 
may, we have, at last, come to the point where only 
blood, much blood, long years of bleeding, can resanc- 
fcify what we have so loosely held and so badly dese- 
crated. To what else could we be descending, for 
these generations past, when winnowing out, as we 
have been doing, all the sacred properties and princi- 
ples of the great fabric God had constructed, and re- 
ducing it to a mere budget of " sovereignties," u con- 
sents," " trusts," " delegations of power," contrived 
" balances," and other as feeble pretences of philoso- 
phy. And yet we have not got on with our desecra- 
tions as fast, and come to the crisis of disruption as 
soon, as might have been expected. Mr. Calhoun 
wrote secession, but did not live to see it. Strange to 
say, it did not come half soon enough to meet the 
flash expectation of Mr. Jefferson himself. With a 
lightness quite unworthy of a great statesman, he 
says : " The late rebellion in Massachusetts, ' the Shay 
rebellion,' has given more alarm than I think it should 
have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen 
states in the course of eleven years, is but one for 
each state in a century and a half. No country 
should be so long without a revolution." (Vol. II., 
p. 331.) And taking his French principles of govern- 
ment no one ever would be ; it would have a revolu- 
tion every year. 



:1- POPtTLAB GOTIBXMI: II 

Be that as it may T the fearful time has finally come. 
By the unwisdoms pot upon it in the name of philo- 
sophy., and the state-right speculation that much ad- 
irired : ddo- i-rdj d.is :.:•:■;>'.. t 1. : :: :.:" .'.-> ::" :: : 
been fatally weakened, and is now for the present only 
a possibility , or government in abeyance. And so the 
great third crisis of which I am to speak is upon us. 

Let us see then, how we are now going to complete 
:i: TSTi":lisli :dr b~i'.^ :: r :-:_.■.-._::..-. 7: ^: :7- 
false axioms qualified., or expelled, so as to let in the 
rule of goyernment. and make it solid in the people's 
heart for ages to come, saying all that is genuine, all 
that is free, is a truly difficult matter : but it will now 
be done. Let it be our thanksgiving to-day, that we 
can distinguish the manner and be certified of the 
result. 

In the first place, what are we doing but exactly 
this. — dddrd:;: yii rde zicst e ~-t-~ hfrr-7 ;: :de 
nation, that which, under the plausible name of u state 
r: ± d:-.'" d:-s riVen :~:~ r~^z~ -1:" .;._:r :: :._d: in 
the goyernment; that which revokes every function 

:: '.; ::l;-::j:r:::ij: ;:T"7:::::.:r:::: ~t 

are sajing continually that slavery is the ; 
rebellion, and it is true ; but slavery could 
drawn out a pin of the public order, if every pin had 
not been first loosened by the false maxims repeated, 
eyery bond of unity and dignity shivered by the pre- 
-t:-."".:v> v.--.::;--;:..- :: dc <-:■.-? ri^d"- i:riziez.:s :ii 
cabals. What now are we dohu M r/rhing down 
±fs--r :: r ".:— 7 _--.;::.:.:.. d... r .den. .d~_ — dd irrdlerj. 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 313 

never to stop marching, or stop pounding, till they 
are trampled so low and ground so fine that no search 
can find them. Our issue is made up, we are going 
to have a government, — no more by sufferance, but a 
government. 

We are going also to vindicate the supremacy of 
the law, just where it broke down. We chose a Pres- 
ident not liked in certain quarters. Without one pre- 
tended injury from him, whole states rebelled. Now 
we have chosen him again, and the issue is made up, 
not upon some other, but upon him. They shall come 
back thus and submit themselves to him at the very 
point of their outbreak, and the sacred right of 
election shall be vindicated. So that as he stole into 
Washington to assume his office, the leaders of rebel- 
lion may steal out of the land, if they can, to bemoan 
as exiles the ignominy of their treason, and die with 
the stamp of God's visible frown upon their awful 
crime. 

In the terrible contest waged, the government mean- 
time is girding itself up in decision, and wrestling like 
a giant with every sort of foe ; with conspiracies, 
treacheries, factions secret, agitations public, midnight 
arsons, foemen in the bush, armies in the field. The 
grapple of law is upon us, and we see that government, 
after all, is somewhat of a reality even with us. We 
thought we could do as we pleased, and were all sov- 
ereigns. We saw velvet gloves on all magistracy. 
Poor Mr. Buchanan did not know any thing he could 
do to coerce a state 1 We wake up now in the discov- 



314 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

ery that our government has, after all, some thunder 
in it. That thunder too, is going to roll its reverbera- 
tions down through all our future history, and what 
we now feel is going to he felt, a hundred fold more 
deeply, long ages hence, that we have the strongest, 
firmest government in the world. 

Again, it is a vast and mighty schooling of authority 
that we have in our armies. Nothing goes by consent, 
or trust, or individual sovereignty here. The power 
is not delegated here and liable to be recalled. 
Authority here lifts every foot by the drum-beat ; de- 
fies all weather, and water, and mud, and swamp ; 
forbids even hunger and sleep ; and squaring the 
massed legions, hurls them in the face of gunpowder 
and over the flaming edges of defence. This it was, 
this military drill, so exact and sharp and systematic, 
that made the Romans, always at war, the great law 
nation of the earth. This is the kind of lesson we are 
taking by the million now, and the result will be a 
great moral intoning of our allegiance, such as we 
could never have had from any other discipline. Why 3 
that single flag of ours means even more to us now 
than the Constitution of the United States did four 
years ago. And the man who should set himself to 
get one stripe or star out of it would fare as Mr. Cal- 
houn did not, in that life-long public advocacy by which 
he dismembered the Union itself. 

Slavery again, we are dealing death blows upon that. 
I say not how it shall go, but go it must ; nay, it is 
already broken to the fall, if we touch it by no civil 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 315 

action whatever. No human power under heaven 

can put it on its feet again and make it stand. What 

. are we all beginning to say. bnt to add our hearty 

Amen to its final departure? There was never a 
funeral where the mourners were so many and so 
happy. We breathe more freely, as soon as we begin 
to think that human slavery is gone. We are clear 
thus of that miserable hypocrisy to our own first prin- 
ciples, that has so long shamed our feeling and made 
our very government seem hollow. We touch bottom 
now in moral ideas, and do not skim the surface any 
longer in lying platitudes that we do not ourselves 
respect. The demoralizations are all stopped, and we 
feel it in us to be true for liberty and right, true for 
the law, and the good, great government our God has 
given us. 

Meantime, what are we doing so constantly, and in so 
many ways, to invoke the sanctions of God and relig- 
ion ? We are not wanting, any of us, to get our affairs 
away from God as we used to be. We associate God 
and religion with all that we are fighting for, and we 
are not satisfied with any mere human atheistic way 
of speaking as to means, or measures, or battles, or 
victories, or great deeds to win them. Our cause, we 
love to think, is especially God's, and so we are con- 
necting all most sacred impressions with our govern- 
ment itself, weaving in a woof of holy feeling among 
all the fibres of our constitutional polity and govern- 
ment. We think much of the righteous men who 
have gone before us, and of their prayers descending 



316 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

upon us, and the sacred charges they have committed 
to us. There is an immense praying too by day and 
by night in all parts of the country ; wives, mothers, 
children, fathers, brothers, praying for the dear ones 
they have sent to the field, for the commanders, for 
the cause ; soldiers fighting and praying together, and 
many of them learning even in the field to pray and 
catch heroic fire from God. Oh ! it is religion, it is 
God ! Every drum-beat is a hymn, the cannon thun- 
der God, the electric silence, darting victory along the 
wires, is the inaudible greeting of God's favoring 
word and purpose. 

And, lest we should forget the religious mood of 
the time, what forbids that, if we go into the revision 
of the Constitution advocated by many, we take just 
pains to record our thanksgiving in it, by inserting 
in the preamble some fit recognition of God ? Not 
that we are to think it a matter of consequence to 
compliment God by inserting there his name ; not 
that we are to think of inscribing there some evan- 
gelic article of doctrine ; it must be enough, — and so 
much ought to be done as a matter of philosophic 
conviction, — to cut off all our noxious theories of 
government by man, and make it the recorded senti- 
ment of the nation that all true authority in law is 
of a moral nature, and stands in allegiance to God. 

How certainly, again, last of all, do we consecrate 
or hallow any thing that we make sacrifices for ! And 
what people of the world ever made such sacrifices of 
labor, and money, and life, as we have made for the 



BY DIVINE RIGHT. 317 

integrity of our institutions? How many of our 
choicest, uoblesl youth, have yielded up their lives in 
the held ? How many commanders, who were taking 
their plaee with the world's great heroes, have fallen 
to be mourned by a sorrowing country ? Blood, blood, 
rivers of blood, have bathed our hundred battle-fields 
and sprinkled the horns of our altars ! Without this 
shedding of blood, how could the violated order be 
sanctified ? And to see the maimed bodies, and the 
disfigured, once noble forms, and go into the desolate 
homes, and listen to the plaint of the mourning chil- 
dren, — Oh ! it is a sacrifice how great that we are 
making ! This is the price we are willing to pay for 
our country and its laws. 

And what shall be the result ? One only result can 
there be. Nothing can be so evident as that we are 
now in a way to have our free institutions crowned 
and consummated. A great problem it was to con- 
nect authority with so great freedom. The free 
maxims we began with and took with no qualification 
were continually demoralizing our conceptions. The 
government had but a feeble connection with moral 
ideas. Now it is to be the ordinance of God, and 
nothing is to have a finer sound of truth for the ages 
to come, I trust, than that famous opening of the 13th 
chapter of the epistle to the Romans : " Let every 
soul be subject unto the higher powers ; for there is 
no power but of God." And when Ave have come to 
this, there is no government on earth that compares 
for strength with ours. Nay it has about as nearly 



318 POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 

proved itself already in that figure as it could be de- 
sired to do. We did not know how strong it was 
before. Nobody had any conception of the immense 
strain it could bear. How bright is the future now 
of such a government and nation ! Hallowed by so 
many battle-fields, and these by the tribute of so 
many histories, and sung by so many songs of the 
great poets of the future, how dear, and sacred, and 
glorious will it be ! And God be thanked it was our 
privilege to live in this great day of crisis, this always- 
to-be-called heroic age of the republic ! 

Let no one imagine that here we shall have reached 
the goal of our progress. Now that government has 
ceased to be itself a demoralizer, as it has hitherto 
been, we may look even for a new-begun growth in the 
moral and religious habit of the nation. What many 
have been fearing, with so great and even rational 
dread, a final collapse in public vice and anarchy, will 
be a destroying angel passed by. There will, instead, 
be a great and sublime progress in character begun. 
There will be less and less need of government, 
because the moral right of what we have is felt. And 
as what we do as right is always free, we shall grow 
more free as the centuries pass, till perhaps, even gov- 
ernment itself may lapse in the freedom of a right- 
eousness consummated in God. 



X. 

OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD * 

Brethren of the Alumni : — 

To pay fit honors to our dead is one of the frater- 
nal and customary offices of these anniversaries ; 
never so nearly an office of high public duty as now, 
when we find the roll of our membership starred with 
so many names made sacred by the giving up of life 
for the Republic. We knew them here in terms of 
cherished intimacy ; some of them so lately that we 
scarcely seem to have been parted from them ; others 
of them we have met here many times, returning to 
renew, with us, their tender and pleasant recollections 
of the past ; but we meet them here no more : they 
are gone to make up the hecatomb offered for their 
and our great nation's life. Hence it has been 
specially desired on this occasion, that we honor their 
heroic sacrifice by some fit remembrance. Had the 
call of your committee been different, I should cer- 
tainly not have responded. 

* An oration given at the Commemorative Celebration held in 
Xew Haven, on Wednesday of Commencement Week, July 26, 
1865, in honor of the Alumni of Yale College, who fell in the 
War of the Rebellion. 

C319) 



320 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

And yet, over-willing as I have been to assume an 
office so entirely grateful, it is a matter none the less 
difficult to settle on the best and most proper way of 
doing the honors intended. I think you will agree 
with me, that it cannot be satisfactorily done by pre- 
paring a string of obituary notices of our dead ; that 
would be more appropriate to some published docu- 
ment, and no wise appropriate to a public discourse. 
Besides, to withdraw them from the vaster roll of the 
dead, in which it was their honor to die, and set them 
in a circle of mere literary clanship, bounding our testi- 
mony of homage by the accident of their matriculation 
here with us, would be rather to claim our honors in 
them, than to pay them honors due to themselves. 
We should seem not even to appreciate the grand pub- 
lic motive to which they gave up their life. They 
honored us in dying for their country, and we fitly 
honor them, when we class them with the glorious 
brotherhood in which they fell. Reserving it therefore 
as my privilege, to make such reference specially to 
them as befits the occasion, I propose a more general 
subject in which due honors may be paid to all, viz., 
The obligations we owe to the dead, — all the dead who 
have fallen in this gigantic and fearfully bloody war. 
There are various ways in which a people, delivered 
by great struggles of war, may endeavor to pay their 
testimony of honor to the men who have fallen. They 
may do it by chanting requiems for the repose 
of their souls; which, though it may not have any 
great effect in that precise way, is at least an act of 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 321 

implied homage and gratitude. The same thing is 
attempted more frequently by covering the dead bene- 
factors and heroes with tributes of eulogy ; only here 
it is a disappointment, that none but a few leaders 
are commemorated, while the undistinguished multi- 
tude, who jeoparded their lives most freely, are passed 
by and forgot. The best thing therefore to be done, 
worthiest both of the dead and the living, is, it seems 
to me, that which 1 now propose, — to recount our 
obligations to the dead in general ; what they have 
done for us, what they have earned at our hands, and 
what they have put it on us to do for the dear common 
country to which they sold their life. 

First of all then, we are to see that we give them 
their due share of the victory and the honors of vic- 
tory. For it is one of our natural infirmities, 
against which we need to be carefully and even jeal- 
ously guarded, that we fall so easily into the impres- 
sion which puts them in the class of defeat and 
failure. Are they not dead ? And who shall count 
the dead as being in the roll of victory ? But the 
living return to greet us and be with us, and we listen 
eagerly to the story of the scenes in which they 
bore their part. We enjoy their exultations and exult 
with them. Their great leaders also return, to be 
crowned by our ovations, and deafened by our ap- 
plauses. These, these, we too readily say, are the 
victors, considering no more the dead but with a cer- 
tain feeling close akin to pity. If, sometime, the story 



322 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

of their fall is told us. the spot described, far in front 
or on the rampart's edge, where they left their bodies 
with the fatal gashes at which their souls went out, we 
listen with sympathy and sad respect, but we do not 
find how to count them in the lists of victory, and 
scarcely to include them in the general victory of the 
cause. All our associations run this way. and before 
we know it vre have them down, most likely, on the 
losing side of the struggle. They belong, we fancy, 
to the waste of victory. — sad waste indeed ! but not 
in any sense a part of victory itself. Xo. no. ye liv- 
ing ! It is the ammunition spent that gains the bat- 
tle, not the ammunition brought off from the field. 
These dead are the spent ammunition of the war. and 
theirs above all is the victory. Upon what indeed 
turned the question of the war itself, but on the dead 
that could be furnished : or what is no wise different. 
the life that could be contributed for that kind of 
expenditure ? These grim heroes therefore, dead and 
dumb, that have strewed so many fields with their 
bodies. — these are the price and purchase-money of 
our triumph. A great many of us were ready to live. 
but these offered themselves, in a sense, to die. and by 
their cost the victory is won. 

Nay, it is not quite enough, if we will know exactly 
who is entitled to a part in these honors, that we only 
remember these dead of the war. Buried generations 
back of them were also present in it. almost as truly 
as they. Thus, if we take the two most honored 
leaders. Grant and Sherman, who. besides the general 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 323 

victory they have gained for the cause, have won their 
sublime distinction as the greatest living commanders 
of the world, it will be impossible to think of them 
as having made or begotten their own lofty endow- 
ments. All great heroic men have seeds and roots, 
far back it may be, out of which they spring, and 
apart from which they could not spring at all; a sub- 
lime fatherhood and motherhood, in whose blood and 
life, however undistinguished, victory was long ago 
distilling for the great day to come of their people 
and nation. They knew it not ; they sleep in graves, 
it may be, now forgot. But their huge-grown, manful 
temperament, the fights they waged and won in life's 
private battle, the lofty prayer-impulse which made 
inspirations their element, their brave self-retaining 
patience, and the orderly vigor of their household com- 
mand were breeding in and in, to be issued finally in 
a hero sonship, and by that fight themselves out into 
the grandest victory for right and law the future 
ages shall know. So that if we ask who are the dead 
that are to be counted in our victory, we must pierce 
the sod of Wether sfield and Stratford, of Woodbury 
and Norwalk, and find where the Honorable Sherman, 
the Deacon Sherman, the Judge Sherman, and all the 
line of the Shermans and their victor wives and 
mothers lie ; and then, if we can guess what they 
were and how they lived, we shall know who fought 
the great campaigns at Atlanta, Savannah and Raleigh. 
So again, if we begin at the good Deacon Grant in 
Mr. Warham's church at Windsor ; descending to the 



324 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

historic Matthew Grant of Tolland, fellow-scout with 
Putnam and captain of a French war company ; then 
to the now living Joel Root Grant, who removed to 
Pennsylvania, afterwards also to Ohio, afterwards 
finally, I believe, to Illinois, whose wanderings appear 
to be commemorated in the classic name of Ulysses ; 
we shall see by what tough flanking processes of life 
and family the great Lieutenant-General was prepar- 
ing, who should turn the front of Vicksburg, and 
march by Lee and Richmond, and cut off, by the rear, 
even the Great Rebellion itself. 0, if we could see it, 
how long and grandly were the victories of these great 
souls preparing ! The chief thing was the making of 
the souls themselves, and when that was done the 
successes came of course. 

And from these two examples you may see by what 
lines of private worth, and public virtue, and more 
than noble blood, the stock of our great patriotic 
armies has been furnished. For how grand a pitch of 
devotion has been often shown by the private soldiers 
of these armies ! There was never embodied, in all 
the armies of the world, a public inspiration so re- 
markable. Really the grandest heroes are these, who 
have neither had, nor wanted, any motive but the sal- 
vation of the Republic. And do you think there was 
nothing back of them to make them what they were ? 
What but an immense outgrowth were they of whole 
ages of worth, intelligence, and public devotion ? And 
for what more honorable distinction should we here 
and always pay our thanks to God ? 0, it is these 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 325 

generations of buried worth that have been fighting in 
our battles, ami it" we will pay our obligations to the 
dead, it is this nameless fatherhood and motherhood, 
before whose memory we shall bare our head in the 
deepest homage and tenderest reverence. 

Still, it is not my intention to occupy you with the 
part fulfilled by these remoter generations of the past, 
but with the more general remembrance of such as 
have fallen in the war itself. I only refer you to 
these, to show you how very trivial and weak a thing 
it is, if we speak of our victories, to imagine that only 
such as come out of the war alive are entitled to credit 
and reverence on account of them. 

But I pass to a point where the dead obtain a right 
of honor that is more distinctive, and belongs not to 
the living at all ; or if in certain things partly to the 
living, yet only to them in some less sacred and prom- 
inent way. 1 speak here of the fact that, according to 
the true economy of the world, so many of its grand- 
est and most noble benefits have and are to have a 
tragic origin, and to come as outgrowths only of blood. 
Whether it be that sin is in the world, and the whole 
creation groaneth in the necessary throes of its dem- 
onized life, we need not stay to inquire ; for sin would 
be in the world and the demonizing spell would be 
upon it. Such was, and was to be, and is, the economy 
of it. Common life, the world's great life, is in the 
large way tragic. As the mild benignity and peaceful 
reign of Christ begins at the principle: "without 



326 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

shedding of blood, there is no remission," so, without 
shedding of blood, there is almost nothing great in the 
world, or to be expected for it. For the life is in the 
blood, — all life ; and it is put flowing within, partly for 
the serving of a nobler use in flowing out on fit occa- 
sion, to quicken and consecrate whatever it touches. 
God could not plan a Peace-Society world, to live in 
the sweet amenities, and grow great and happy by 
simply thriving and feeding. There must be bleeding 
also. Sentiments must be born that are children of 
thunder ; there must be heroes and heroic nationali- 
ties, and martyr testimonies, else there will be only 
mediocrities, insipidities, common-place men, and com- 
mon-place writings, — a sordid and mean peace, liber- 
ties without a pulse, and epics that are only eclogues. 
And here it is that the dead of our war have done 
for us a work so precious, which is all their own, — 
they have bled for us ; and by this simple sacrifice of 
blood they have opened for us a new great chapter of 
life. We were living before in trade and commerce, 
bragging of our new cities and our census reports, and 
our liberties that were also consciously mocked by our 
hypocrisies ; having only the possibilities of great 
inspirations and not the fact, materialized more and 
more evidently in our habits and sentiments, strong 
principally in our discords and the impetuosity of our 
projects for money. But the blood of our dead has 
touched our souls with thoughts more serious and 
deeper, and begotten, as I trust, somewhat of that 
high-bred inspiration which is itself the possibility of 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 327 

genius, and of a true public greatness. Saying noth- 
ing then for the present of our victors and victories, 
let us see what we have gotten by the blood of our 
slain. 

Ami first of all, in this blood our unity is cemented 
and forever sanctified. Something was gained for us 
here, at the beginning, by our sacrifices in the fields 
of our Revolution, — something, but not all. Had it 
not been for this common bleeding of the States in 
their common cause, it is doubtful whether our Con- 
stitution could ever have been carried. The discords 
of the Convention were imminent, as we know, and 
were only surmounted by compromises that left them 
still existing. They were simply kenneled under the 
Constitution and not reconciled, as began to be evident 
shortly in the doctrines of state sovereignty, and 
state nullification, here and there asserted. We had 
not bled enough, as yet, to merge our colonial dis- 
tinctions and make us a proper nation. Our battles 
had not been upon a scale to thoroughly mass our 
feeling, or gulf us in a common cause and life. 
Against the state-rights doctrines, the logic of our 
Constitution was decisive, and they were refuted a 
thousand times over. But such things do not go by 
argument. Xo argument transmutes a discord, or 
composes a unity where there was none. The matter 
wanted here was blood, not logic, and this we now 
have on a scale large enough to meet our necessity. 
True it is blood on one side, and blood on the other, — 



328 OUE OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

all the better for that ; for bad bleeding kills, and 
righteous bleeding sanctifies and quickens. The 
state-rights doctrine is now fairly bled away, and the 
unity died for, in a way of such prodigious devotion, 
is forever sealed and glorified. 

Nor let any one be concerned for the sectional rela- 
tions of defeat and victory. For there has all the 
while been a grand, suppressed sentiment of country 
in the general field of the rebellion, which is bursting 
up already into sovereignty out of the soil itself. 
There is even a chance that this sentiment may blaze 
into a passion hot enough to utterly burn up whatever 
fire itself can master. At all events it will put under 
the ban, from this time forth, all such instigators of 
treason as could turn their peaceful States into hells 
of desolation, and force even patriotic citizens to fight 
against the homage they bore their country. However 
this may be, the seeds of a true public life are in the 
soil, waiting to grow apace. It will be as when the 
flood of Noah receded. For the righteous man per- 
chance began to bethink himself shortly, and to be 
troubled, that he took no seeds into the ark ; but no 
sooner were the waters down, than the oaks and 
palms and all great trees sprung into life, under the 
dead old trunks of the forest, and the green world re- 
appeared even greener than before ; only the sections 
had all received new seeds, by a floating exchange, 
and put them forthwith into growth together with 
their own. So the unity now to be developed, after 
this war-deluge is over, is even like to be more cordial 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 329 

than it ever could have been. It will be no more 
thought of as a mere human compact, or composition, 
always to be debated by the letter, but it will be that 
bond of common life which God has touched with 
blood : a sacredly heroic. Providentially tragic unity, 
where Gods cherubim stand guard over grudges and 
hates and remembered jealousies, and the sense of 
nationality becomes even a kind of religion. How 
many would have said that the Saxon Heptarchy, 
tormented by so many intrigues and feuds of war, 
could never be a nation I But their formal combina- 
tion under Egbert, followed by their wars against the 
Danes under Alfred, set them in a solid, sanctified 
unity, and made them, as a people, one true England, 
instead of the seven Englands that were ; which seven 
were never again to be more than historically remem- 
bered. And so, bleeding on together from that time 
to this in all sorts of wars ; wars civil and wars 
abroad, drenching the land and coloring the sea with 
their blood ; gaining all sorts of victories and suffer- 
ing all kinds of defeats ; their parties and intestine 
strifes are no more able now to so much as raise a 
thought that is not in allegiance to their country. In 
like manner, — let no one doubt of it, — these United 
States, having dissolved the intractable matter of so 
many infallible theories and bones of contention in 
the dreadful menstruum of their blood, are to settle 
into fixed unity, and finally into a nearly homogene- 
ous life. 



330 OUE OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

Passing to another point of view, we owe it to our 
dead in this terrible war, that they have given us the 
possibility of a great consciousness and great public 
sentiments. There must needs be something lofty in 
a people's action, and above all something heroic in 
their sacrifices for a cause, to sustain a great senti- 
ment in them. They will try, in the smooth days of 
peace and golden thriftiness and wide-spreading 
growth, to have it, and perhaps will think they really 
have it, but they will only have semblances and coun- 
terfeits ; patriotic professions that are showy and 
thin, swells and protestations that are only oratorical 
and have no true fire. All the worse if they have 
interests and institutions that are all the while mock- 
ing their principles ; breeding factions that can be 
quieted only by connivances and compromises and 
political bargains, that sell out their muniments of 
right and nationality. Then you shall see all high 
devotion going down as by a law, till nothing is left 
but the dastard picture of a spent magistracy that, 
when every thing is falling into wreck, can only whim- 
per that it sees not any thing it can do ! Great sen- 
timents go when they are not dismissed, and will not 
come when they are sent for. We cannot keep them 
by much talk, nor have them because we have heard 
of them and seen them in a classic halo. A lofty 
public consciousness arises only when things are 
loftily and nobly done. It is only when we are rallied 
by a cause, in that cause receive a great inspiration, 
in that inspiration give our bodies to the death, that 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 331 

at last, out of many such heroes dead, comes the possi- 
bility of great thoughts, fired by sacrifice, and a true 
public' magnanimity. 

In this view, we are not the same people that we 
were, ami never can be again. Our young scholars, 
that before could only find the forms of great feeling 
in their classic studies, now catch the fire of it un- 
sought. Emulous before of saying fine things for 
their country, they now choke for the impossibilty of 
saying what they truly feel. The pitch of their life 
is raised. The tragic blood of the war is a kind of 
new capacity for them. They perceive what it is to 
have a country and a public devotion. Great aims 
are close at hand, and in such aims a finer type of 
manners. And what shall follow, but that, in their 
more invigorated, nobler life, they are seen hereafter 
to be manlier in thought and scholarship, and closer 
to genius in action. 

I must also speak of the new great history sancti- 
fied by this war, and the blood of its fearfully bloody 
sacrifices. So much worth and character were never 
sacrificed in a human war before. And by this 
mournful offering, we have bought a really stupend- 
ous chapter of history. We- had a little very beauti- 
ful history before, which we were beginning to cherish 
and fondly cultivate. But we had not enough of it 
to beget a full historic consciousness. As was just 
now intimated in a different way, no people ever 
become vigorously conscious, till they mightily do, 



332 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

and heroically suffer. The historic sense is close 
akin to tragedy. We say it accusingly often, — and 
foolishly, — that history cannot live on peace, but must 
feed itself on blood. The reason is that, without the 
blood, there is really nothing great enough in motive 
and action, taking the world as it is, to create a great 
people or story. If a gospel can be executed only in 
blood, if there is no power of salvation strong enough 
to carry the world's feeling which is not gained by 
dying for it, how shall a selfish race get far enough 
above itself, to be kindled by the story of its action 
in the dull routine of its common arts of peace ? 
Doubtless it should be otherwise, even as goodness 
should be universal ; but so it never has been, and 
upon the present footing of evil never can be. The 
great cause must be great as in the clashing of evil ; 
and heroic inspirations, and the bleeding of heroic 
worth must be the zest of the story. Nations can 
sufficiently live only as they find how to energetically 
die. In this view, some of us have felt, for a long 
time, the want of a more historic life, to make us a 
truly great people. This want is now supplied ; for 
now, at last, we may be said to have gotten a history. 
The story of this four years' war is the grandest chap- 
ter, 1 think, of heroic fact, and tragic devotion, and 
spontaneous public sacrifice, that has ever been made 
in our world. The great epic story of Troy is but a 
song in comparison. There was never a better, and 
never so great a cause ; order against faction, law 
against conspiracy, liberty and right against the mad- 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 333 

ness and defiant wrong of slavery, the unity and sal- 
vation of thf greatest future nationality and freest 
eminent of the world, a perpetual state of war to 
be averted, and the preservation for mankind of an 
example of popular government and free society that 
is a token of promise for true manhood, and an omen 
of death to old abuse and prescriptive wrong the 
world over ; this has been our cause, and it is some- 
thing to say that we have borne ourselves worthily in 
it. Our noblest and best sons have given their life to 
it. We have dotted whole regions with battle-fields. 
We have stained how many rivers, and bays, and how 
many hundred leagues of railroad, with our blood ! 
We have suffered appalling defeats ; twiee at Bull 
Run. at Wilson's Creek, in the great campaign of the 
Peninsula, at Cedar Mountain, at Fredericksburg, at 
Chancellorsville, at Chickamauga, and upon the Red 
River, leaving our acres of dead on all these fields 
and many others less conspicuous ; yet, abating no jot 
of courage and returning with resolve unbroken, we 
have converted these defeats into only more impres- 
sive victories. In this manner too, with a better for- 
tune nobly earned, we have hallowed, as names of 
glory and high victory. Pea Ridge, Donelson, Shiloh, 
Hilton Head, Xew Orleans, Yicksburg, Port Hudson, 
Stone River, Lookout Mountain, Resaca, Atlanta, 
Fort Fisher, Gettysburg, Nashville, Wilmington, 
Petersburg and Richmond, Benton ville. Mobile Bay, 
and, last of all, the forts of Mobile city. All these 
and a hundred others are now become, and in all 



334 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

future time are to be, names grandly historic. And 
to have them is to be how great a gift for the ages to 
come ! By how many of the future children of the 
Republic will these spots be visited, and how many 
will return from their pilgrimages thither, blest in 
remembrances of the dead, to whom they owe their 
country ! 

Among the fallen too we have names that will glow 
with unfading lustre on whatever page they are writ- 
ten ; our own brave Lyon, baptizing the cause in the 
blood of his early death ; our Sedgwick, never found 
wanting at any point of command, equal in fact to the 
very highest command, and only too modest to receive 
it when offered ; the grandly gifted young McPherson, 
who had already fought himself into the first rank of 
leadership, and was generally counted the peerless 
hope and prodigy of the armies ; Reynolds also, and 
Kearney, and Reno, and Birney ; and how many bril- 
liant stars, or even constellations of stars, in the lower 
degrees of command, such as Rice, and Lowell, and 
Vincent, and Shaw, and Stedman, and a hundred 
others in like honor, for the heroic merit of their 
leadership and death ! And yet, when I drop all 
particular names, dear as they may be, counting them 
only the smoke and not the fire, letting the unknown 
trains of dead heroes pack and mass and ascend, to 
shine, as by host, in the glorious Milky Way of their 
multitude, — men that left their business and all the 
dearest ties of home and family to fight their country's 
righteous war, and fought on till they fell, — then for 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DPI AD. 335 

the first time do I seem to feel the tide-swing of a 
great historic consciousness. God forbid that any 
prudishness of modesty should here detain us. Let 
us fear no more to say that we have won a history 

and the right to be a consciously historic people. 
Henceforth our new world even heads the old, having 
in this single chapter risen clean above it. The wars 
of Caesar, and Frederic, and Napoleon, were grand 
enough in their leadership, but there is no grand peo- 
ple or popular greatness in them, consequently no 
true dignity. In this Avar of ours it is the people, 
moving by their own decisive motion, in the sense of 
their own great cause. For this cause we have vol- 
unteered by the million, and in three thousand millions 
of money, and by the resolute bleeding of our men and 
the equally resolute bleeding of our self-taxation, we 
have bought and sanctified consentingly all these 
fields, all that is grand in this thoroughly principled 
history. 

Again, it is not a new age of history only that we 
owe to the bloody sacrifices of this war, but in much 
the same manner the confidence of a new literary age ; 
a benefit that we are specially called, in such a place 
as this, and on such an occasion, to remember and 
fitly acknowledge. Great public throes are, mentally 
speaking, changes of base for some new thought-cam- 
paign in a people. Hence the brilliant new literature 
of the age of Queen Elizabeth ; then of another golden 
era under Anne ; and then still again, as in the arrival 



336 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

of another birth-time, after the Napoleonic wars of 
George the Fourth. The same thing has been noted, 
I believe, in respect to the wars of Greece and Ger- 
many. Only it is in such wars as raise the public 
sense and majesty of a people that the result is seen 
to follow. For it is the high-souled feeling raised that 
quickens high-souled thought, and puts the life of 
genius in the glow of new-born liberty. This we are 
now to expect, for the special reason also that we have 
here, for the first time, conquered a position. Thus 
it will be seen that no great writer becomes himself, 
in his full power, till he has gotten the sense of posi- 
tion. Much more true is this of a people. And here 
has been our weakness until now. We have held the 
place of cliency, we have taken our models and laws 
of criticism, and to a great extent our opinions, from 
the English motherhood of our language and mind. 
Under that kind of pupilage we live no longer ; we 
are thoroughly weaned from it, and become a people 
in no secondary right. Henceforth we are not going 
to write English, but American. As we have gotten 
our position, we are now to have our own civilization, 
think our own thoughts, rhyme in our own measures, 
kindle our own fires, and make our own canons of crit- 
icism, even as we settle the proprieties of punishment 
for our own traitors. We are not henceforth to live as 
by cotton and corn and trade, keeping the downward 
slope of thrifty mediocrity. Our young men are not 
going out of college, staled, in the name of discipline, 
by their carefully conned lessons, to be launched on 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 33T 

the voyage of life as ships without wind, but they arc 
to have greal sentiments, and mighty impulsions, and 
souls alive all through in fires of high devotion. 

We have gotten also now the historic matter of a 
true oratorio inspiration, and the great orators are 
coming after. In the place of politicians we are going 
to have, at least, some statesmen ; for we have gotten 
the pitch of a grand, new, Abrahamic statesmanship, 
unsophisticated, honest and real ; no cringing syco- 
phancy, or cunning art of demagogy. We have also 
facts, adventures, characters enough now in store, to 
feed five hundred years of fiction. We have also 
plots, and lies, and honorable perjuries, false heroics, 
barbaric murders and assassinations, conspiracies of 
fire and poison, — enough of them, and wicked enough, 
to furnish the Satanic side of tragedy for long ages to 
come ; coupled also with such grandeurs of public 
valor and principle, such beauty of heroic sacrifice, in 
womanhood and boyhood, as tragedy has scarcely yet 
been able to find. As to poetry, our battle-fields are 
henceforth names poetic, and our very soil is touched 
with a mighty poetic life. In the rustle of our winds, 
what shall the waking soul of our poets think of, but 
of brave souls riding by ? In our thunders they may 
hear the shocks of charges, and the red of the sunset 
shall take a tinge in their feeling from the summits 
where our heroes fell. A new sense comes upon every 
thing, and the higher soul of mind, quickened by new 
possibilities, finds inspirations where before it found 
only rocks, and ploughlands, and much timber for the 



338 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

saw. Are there no great singers to rise in this new 
time ? Are there no unwonted fires to be kindled in 
imaginations fanned by these new glows of devotion ? 
We seem, as it were in a day, to be set in loftier 
ranges of thought, by this huge flood-tide that has 
lifted our nationality, gifted with new sentiments and 
finer possibilities, commissioned to create, and write, 
and sing, and, in the sense of a more poetic feeling at 
least, to be all poets. 

Considering now these higher possibilities of litera- 
ture,, who shall say how much our one hundred fallen 
brothers have done for us in taking the field to die for 
their country ? The literary talent of some of them 
was in the highest grade of promise, yet even these 
may have done more for us by their death than they 
could have done by their life. As the scholarly and 
piquant Winthrop became an author of renown only 
after his death on the field of Big Bethel, so, in a 
little different sense, may it be true of them all. They 
reverse, how touchingly, the fable of Antaeus. Instead 
of receiving from the earth, when they touch it, a 
giant strength, they give to the earth, as it takes in 
their blood, a new inspiration for all brothers in learn- 
ing for long ages to come ; and so, for as long a time, 
they will write, and speak, and sing in myriads of 
great souls coming after. Perhaps we should not 
think of educating men to be used in dying, yet the 
dying nobly and with power is one of the most fruitful 
and dearest uses to which any of us come. Would that 
all our youth could see it ! Young Carrington, for ex- 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 339 

ample, had just come to the flowerof his graduation, 
and the loss of so greal promise, before the lime of 
fruit, Beems to he total. Far from that as possible ! 
How many of his comrades have been impressed, even 
as they do not know themselves, by the sacred beauty 
of his early sacrifice ; how many been impregnated 
in their own flowering, with those best and highest 
sentiments that never set their fruit after men are 
past their flower ! I know not what the ingenious and 
versatile Blake might have written, or how or when 
the lines of humor he took so nicely by his eye, and 
sketched so adroitly by the off-hand cunning of his 
pencil, might have flashed into words and brilliant 
authorship ; but the noble successes and honors of his 
soldier life, too soon cut short in the fatal fight of 
Cedar Mountain, have turned his key of humor, how 
affectingly ; showing us in what close company a high 
soul often joins the heroic impulse with exuberant 
play. 

Great action is the highest kind of writing, and he 
that makes a noble character writes the finest kind of 
book. To invent is one thing, to become is another, 
and vastly higher. Young Rice, for example, who 
begins a private and ends a brigadier, rushed up the 
steep of promotion by the general acclaim of his supe- 
riors, — I know not what he might have written; 
enough to know what he was. Nothing makes so 
grand a figure, whether in fact or fiction, as a charac- 
ter of high adventure coupled with high principle ; and 
this he began to show before he became a soldier. 



340 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

Thus, being in great trouble after his graduation for 
the debt incurred in his studies, he dared exactly what 
few young men could, and what still fewer could with 
success ; he put himself boldly before a gentleman of 
wealth to whom he was a perfect stranger, craving the 
loan of $500, engaging to repay it within a year, from 
an expected income in teaching ; and so well did he 
manage himself and his story that he was successful. 
The mere personal interest he excited won the cause 
for him, and with only a faint glimmer of expectation 
that the money would ever be seen again, it was 
cheerfully put in his hands. But before the appointed 
year is out, behold he appears with his fund of pay- 
ment ready ! Does any one require to be told that 
such a man will fight, or that he will do it well and 
faithfully ? Passing through six great battles and 
shining in them all, he fell on the banks of the Po, 
and was carried to the field hospital to die. In the 
death struggle which shortly followed, he asked to be 
turned on his side. " Which way shall we turn you ? " 
" Turn my face to the enemy," he replied, gaspingly ; 
and in these six words the book God gave him to write 
was finished. It was a book all action, and he might 
never have written any other. It was a battle fought 
out to the end, in the " front face " manner of a sol- 
dier ; but it was none the less a poem, a tragedy, a 
character fascinatingly drawn. If it had been some- 
thing to compose it, as by literary art, how much more 
to be it, with no art at all ! No, my brothers, we will 
not bewail these dead of ours to-day as being lost to 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 341 

the cause of letters ; for the inspirations and the grand 
realities of letters they have given up their lives to 
supply, as truly as to save their country. 

I might also speak at large, if I had time, of the 
immense benefit these dead have conferred upon our 
free institutions themselves, by the consecrating blood 
of their sacrifice. But I can only say that having 
taken the sword to be God's ministers, and to vindi- 
cate the law as his ordinance, they have done it even 
the more effectively in that they have died for it. It 
has been a wretched fault of our people that we have 
so nearly ignored the moral foundations of our gov- 
ernment. Regarding it as a merely human creation, 
we have held it only by the tenure of convenience. 
Hence came the secession. For what we create by 
our will, may we not dissolve by the same ? Bitter 
has been the cost of our pitifully weak philosophy. 
In these rivers of blood we have now bathed our insti- 
tutions, and they are henceforth to be hallowed in our 
sight. Government is now become Providential, — no 
more a mere creature of our human will, but a grandly 
moral affair. The awful stains of sacrifice are upon 
it, as upon the fields where our dead battled for it, and 
it is sacred for their sakes. The stamp of God's sov- 
ereignty is also upon it ; for he has beheld their blood 
upon its gate-posts and made it the sign of his passo- 
ver. Henceforth we are not to be manufacturing 
government, and defying in turn its sovereignty 
because we have made it ourselves; but we are to 



342 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

revere its sacred rights, rest in its sacred immunities, 
and have it even as the Caesar whom our Christ him- 
self requires us to obey. Have we not also proved, 
written it down for all the ages to come, that the most 
horrible, God-defying crime of this world is unneces- 
sary rebellion ? 

I might also speak of the immense contribution 
made for religion, by the sacrifices of these bleeding 
years. Religion, at the first, gave impulse, and, by a 
sublime recompense of reaction, it will also receive 
impulse. What then shall we look for but for a new 
era now to break forth, a day of new gifts and powers 
and holy endowments from on high, wherein great 
communities and friendly nations shall be girded in 
sacrifice, for the cause of Christ their Master ? 

But these illustrations must not be continued far- 
ther. Such are some of the benefits we are put in 
obligations for by the dead in this great war. And 
now it remains to ask, by what fitting tribute these 
obligations are to be paid ? And it signifies little, 
first of all, to say : Let the widows of these dead be 
widows, and their children, children of the Republic. 
Let them also be the private care of us all. Let the 
childless families adopt these fatherless. Give the 
sons and daughters growing up the necessary educa- 
tion : open to them ways of industry ; set them in 
opportunities of advancement. Let our whole people 
resolve themselves into a grand Sanitary Commission, 
for these after-blows of suffering and loss occasioned 
by the war. 



OUK OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 343 

Again, it is another of the sacred obligations \vc 
owe to the dead, that we sanctify their good name. 
Nothing can he more annoying to the sense of honor, 
than the mischievous facility of some, in letting down 
the merit and repute of the fallen by the flippant 
recollection of their faults, or, it may be, of their 
former vices. Who have earned immunity from this 
petty kind of criticism, if not they who have died for 
their country? How great a thing has it been for 
many in this war, to spring into consciously new life, 
in the ennobling discovery that they could have a 
great feeling ! And what, in the plane of mere 
nature, will so transform a man, as to be caught by 
the heroic impulse, and begin to have the sense of a 
cause upon him ? Indeed I am not sure that some 
specially heroic natures do not flag and go down under 
evil, just because the storm they were made for has 
not begun to blow. Some such were greater souls 
perhaps than we thought, and if they were not per- 
fectly great, who but some low ingrate would now dim 
their halo by a word ? And what if it should happen, 
that even a Congressional Committee may so far turn 
themselves into a committee of scandal, as to assail 
with unrighteous facility the military merit of the 
dead ? If the dead cannot answer, what shall we do 
but answer for the dead ? 

A great work also is due from us to the dead, and 
quite as much for our own sakes as theirs, in the due 
memorizing of their names and acts. Let the nation's 
grand war monument be raised in massive granite, 



Ml OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

piercing the sky. Let every State, honored by such 
names as Sedgwick, and Lyon, and Mansfield, claim 
the right to their honors for the future ages, by rais- 
ing, on some highest mountain top, or in some park 
of ornament, the conspicuous shaft or pillar, that will 
fitly represent the majesty of the men. The towns 
and villages will but honor themselves, when they 
set up their humbler monuments inscribed with the 
names of the fallen. Let the churches also, and the 
college halls and chapels, show their mural tablets, 
where both worship and learning may be quickened 
by the remembrance of heroic deeds and deaths. In 
this way, or some other, every name of our fallen 
Alumni should be conspicuously recorded in the Col- 
lege ; that our sons coming hither may learn, first of 
all, that our mother gives her best to die for their 
country. 

There should also be given to the public a carefully 
prepared volume, containing distinct notices and recol- 
lections of all our Alumni who have fallen in the war, 
and have held a figure sufficiently public to be dis- 
tinctly commemorated. There are many such names 
that I should like to present for your particular re- 
membrance on this occasion ; such as Hebard, and 
Butler, and Hannahs, and Roberts, and Porter, and 
Dutton, and others who have won distinction with 
them. I have already named a few examples from 
the general list in another connection. Excuse me if 
I briefly commemorate two others ; viz., Captain 
William Wheeler and Major Henry W. Camp ; doing 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 345 

it partly for my own sat isi'act ion, because I had a 
particular personal interest in them. 

Young Wheeler's enlistment in an independent 
battery put him completely out of the line of pro- 
motion ; and yet it must have come, in some way 
extraordinary, shortly; indeed, I learn that it was 
just about to come, by a stride that would have set 
him in a high position. No Captain of the war was 
more efficient or more perfectly master of his place; 
none more thoroughly idolized in the love and pride 
of his command. Sober, and cool, and clear-headed, 
and perfectly a man in every highest quality of energy 
and correct principle and unfearing devotion to his 
cause, he was already grandly promoted in the judg- 
ment of all who knew him. Ordered in a severe fight 
to shift his battery to another position, he sent it 
promptly with his men, and having a piece too much 
disabled to be moved, he could not leave it, but letting 
go his horse took hold with a sergeant, and they two, 
loading and firing in a battle of their own, leveled 
their aim with such precision, while the enemy's grape 
were spattering on the gun, that they drove back the 
advancing column and saved the piece. How they 
lived a moment in such a storm nobody could guess ; 
but alas ! the sharpshooter's single bullet took him 
afterwards, at a post of honor given him and his lit- 
tle command to be maintained by them alone, and 
there his brave, noble chapter of life was ended. 

Major Cam}) I had known from his childhood, 
onward, and had watched him with a continually 



346 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

growing expectation to the last. His wondrously fine 
person was a faithful type of his whole character and 
power. His modesty and courage never parted com- 
pany. His almost over-delicate conscience was fitly 
fortified by a strong, unsubduable will. He had no 
flash qualities, but was always unfolding in full round 
harmony with himself. As a man he scarcely dared 
to think himself a Christian ; as a Christian he was 
never any the less perfectly a man. My impression 
of him is that I have never known so much of worth, 
and beauty, and truth, and massive majesty ; so much, 
in a word, of all kinds of promise, embodied in 
any young person. Whatever he might undertake, 
whether to be a poet, or a philosopher, or a states- 
man, or a preacher, or a military commander, or in- 
deed an athlete, he seemed to have every quality on 
hand necessary to success. And this I think is the 
impression of him that every reader of his noble story 
will have received. When he fights a college boat 
race at Worcester, or the sea at Hatteras Inlet, or the 
enemy at Newbern, or the dreary rigors of a prison, 
or the impossible rigors of an escape, it makes little 
difference whether he is successful or not ; everybody 
sees that he ought to be. Finally paroled and released, 
after many long months of confinement, he returns 
home on a short furlough ; but hearing, only five days 
after, that he has been exchanged, he tears himself 
away from furlough and friends, and is off in two 
hours time for his regiment. And he joins them on 
the field of battle, welcomed by the acclamations of 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 347 

the men and the hearty cheers of the command. 

Though he has a nature gentle as a woman's, he is 
yet railed the [ron Man; and the iron property was 
abundantly shown again and again, wherever that 
kind of metal was wanted. His regiment, always 
relied on, is finally brought up in two lines to head an 
assault, and he is purposely set on the wing of the 
second line, that he may not be thrown away. Be- 
lieving that the assault must be an utter failure, for 
that was the opinion of all, he still modestly suggested 
that he might be put upon the forward line ! And 
there he fell riddled with bullets, only not to see the 
general massacre of the men. 0, it was a dark, sad 
day that cost the loss of such a man ! 

• ' For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer." 

Little does it signify to him, though much to us, 
that his memory should be sanctified by some endur- 
ing record. 

And yet, speaking thus of particular names and 
leaders to be commemorated, it is impossible not to 
be troubled by a certain feeling of absurdity, that our 
honors cannot be graded, after all, by any scale of 
justice. Multitudes of the bravest are nameless ; or 
if we find their names, we know not whose they arc, 
(>!• where or how they fell. I certainly would not 
diminish the glory of the great commanders, whether 
dead or living. Commanders are the brain of all 
movement and the soul of all great confidence, gath 



348 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

ering up in their person whole divisions and armies 
and hurling them forward upon victory. And yet 
how much does it signify that they have men to in- 
spire and lead who can dare to be men, and fight in 
the sense of a cause ! And if we speak of courage 
to die, how many thousands who were only privates, 
and are now without a name, have faced, each one, 
more perils, pitched themselves into more cannons' 
mouths and more bayonetted columns, than all the 
Major-Generals of the armies ! 

Ten color-bearers, for example, seize the fatal staff, 
one after another, and the last finally plants it on the 
edge of the parapet to be gained ! Regiments that 
are sworn to never falter, pushed into the assault 
again and again because they can be relied on, bearing 
off their dead each time till they are reduced to a 
handful, yet ready to halve that handful, if they must, 
in heading an assault that every man of them knows 
to be senseless, — this I call great soldiership ! Make 
due note too of those thousands of prisoners, shut up 
in the pen of their captivity, without officers, deci- 
mated every month and almost every day by starva- 
tion, yet voting, to a man, that they will never yield 
their allegiance to even that cogent argument ! Or 
go through the wards of any crowded hospital, where 
the men are dying every hour, and catch the mes- 
sages they send to wife, or child, or sweetheart : " Say 
that I am gone ; and that, never having once regretted 
my enlistment, I willingly die for my country." Who 
of you does not ache with me for the impossibility of 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 349 

doing jusl 

ps of them had 
our good father and martyr President sent on before 
him. from all his fields of battle ! And as our Abra- 
ham's bosom was a such on earth, much 
more tenderly open will it be now ! How pater- 
nally has he greeted them ! How eagerly caught 
the sublime story of their soldiership ! And if he 
could return again to his office, it would not be 
strange if he should send in a new batch of Major- 
Generals to I ssed, whom the Senate never before 
heard of ! Really this wonderful massing of private 
worth and public valor in our armies, is the proudest 
fact of the war. and it to ourselves to say it, 
and to make our account of it. in whatever way we 
are able. 

But there is one other and yet higher duty that we 
• tJ se dead ; viz.. that we take their places and 
stand in their cause. It is even a great law of natural 
duty that the living shall come into the places and 
works of the dead. The same also is accepted and 
honored by Christianity, when it shows the Christian 
son. and brother, and friend, stepping into the pli 
made vacant by the dead, to assume their blessed and 
great work unaccomplished, and die. if need be. in the 
testimony of a common martyrdom. They challeng 
in this maimer, if the commentators will suffer it. 
the vows of baptism, and M were baptized for the 
i." — consecrated upon the dead, for the work of 
the dead. Gud lays it upon us in the same way now, 



350 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

to own the bond of fealty that connects us with the 
fallen, in the conscious community and righteous kin- 
ship of their cause. And then, as brothers baptized 
for the dead. — Alumni, so to speak, of the Republic. — 
we are to execute their purpose and fulfill the idea 
that inspired them. Neither is it enough at this point 
to go off in a general heroic, promising, in high rheto- 
ric, to give our life for the country in like manner. 
There is no present likelihood that we shall be called 
to do any such thing. No. but we have duties upon 
us that are closer at hand : viz.. to wind up and settle 
this great tragedy in a way to exactly justify every 
drop of blood that has been shed in it. Like the 
blood of righteous Abel it cries both to us and to God. 
from every field, and river, and wood, and road, dotted 
by our pickets and swept by the march of our armies. 
First of all we are sworn to see that no vestige of 
state sovereignty is left, and the perpetual, supreme 
sovereignty of the nation established. For what but 
this have our heroes died ? Xot one of them would 
have died for a government of mere optional continu- 
ance : not one for a government fit to be rebelled 
against. But they volunteered for a government in 
perfect right, and one to be perpetual as the stars, 
and they went to the death as against the crime of 
hell. Tell me also this. — if a government is good 
enough to die for. is it not good enough to die by. 
when it is violated '? Xot that every traitor is. of 
course, to be visited by the punishment of treason. It 
is not for me to say who. or how many or few. shall 



OUR BLIG ATI ONS TO Til E DEAD. 351 

suffer i hat punishment. Bui 1 would willingly take 
the question to the dead victims of Belle Isle, and 
Salisbury, and Andersonville, and let them be the 
judges. There is no revenge in them now. The wild 
storms of their agony arc laid, and the thoughts which 
bear sway in the world where they are gathered are 
those of the merciful Christ, and Christ is the judge 
before whose bar they know full well that their redress 
is sure. And yet I think it will be none the less their 
judgment that something is due to law and justice 
here. As, too, it was something for them to die for 
the law, I can imagine them to ask whether it is not 
something for the law to prove its vindicated honor in 
the fit punishment of such barbarities ? May it not 
occur to them also to ask, whether proportion is not 
an everlasting attribute of justice ? And if punctual 
retribution is to follow the sudden taking off of one, 
whether the deliberate and slow starvation of so many 
thousands is to be fitly ignored and raise no sword of 
judgment ? Neither is it any thing to say, that the 
awful ruin of the rebellious country is itself a punish- 
ment upon the grandest scale, and ought to be suffi- 
cient ; for the misery of it is, that it falls on the inno- 
cent and not on the leaders and projectors, who are 
the chief criminals. Our liberal friends abroad con- 
jure us to follow the lead of their despotisms, and 
cover up gently all these offenses, because they are 
only political. Ah ! there is a difference which they 
need to learn. Doubtless governments may be bad 
enough to make political offenses innocent; nay, to 



352 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

make them even righteous. But we have not fought 
this dreadful war to a close, just to put our govern- 
ment upon a par with their oppressive dynasties ! 
We scorn the parallel they give us ; and we owe it 
even to them to say, that a government which is 
friendly, and free, and right, protecting all alike, and 
doing the most for all, is one of God's sacred finalities, 
which no hand may touch, or conspiracy assail, with- 
out committing the most damning crime, such as can 
be matched by no possible severities of justice. We 
are driven in thus on every side, upon the conclusion 
that examples ought to be and must be made. Only 
they must be few and such as can be taken apart from 
all sectional conditions ; for we have sections to com- 
pose, and the ordinary uses of punishment in cases of 
private treason do not pertain where the crime is 
nearly geographic, and is scarcely different from pub- 
lic war. 

One thing more we are also sworn upon the dead to 
do ; viz., to see that every vestige of slavery is swept 
clean. We did not begin the war to extirpate slavery ; 
but the war itself took hold of slavery on its way, and 
as this had been the gangrene of our wound from the 
first, we shortly put ourselves heartily to the • cleans- 
ing, and shall not, as good surgeons, leave a part of 
the virus in it. We are not to extirpate the form and 
leave the fact. The whole black code must go ; the 
law of passes, and the law of evidence, and the unequal 
laws of suit and impeachment for crime. We are 
bound, if possible, to make the emancipation work 



OUR OR LI (NATIONS TO THE DEAD. 353 

well : as it never can, till tin 4 old habit of domination, 
and the new grudges of exasperated pride and passion, 
are qualified by gentleness and consideration. Other- 
wise there will be no industry but only jangle; society 
in fact will be turned into a hell of poverty and confu- 
sion. And this kind relationship never can be secured, 
till the dejected and despised race are put upon the 
footing of men, and allowed to assert themselves some- 
how in the laws. Putting aside all theoretic notions 
of equality, and regarding nothing but the practical 
want of the emancipation, negro suffrage appears to 
be indispensable. But the want is one thing, and the 
right of compelling it another. Our States have 
always made their own laws of suffrage, and if we 
want to resuscitate the state rights doctrine, there is 
no so ready way as to rouse it by state wrongs. But 
there is always a way of doing what wants to be 
done, — pardon me if I name it even here ; for our 
dead are not asking mere rhetoric of us, but duty. 
They call us to no whimpering over them, no sad 
weeping, or doling of soft sympathy, but to counsel 
and true action. I remember too, that we have taken 
more than a hundred thousand of these freedmen of 
the war to fight our common battle. I remember the 
massacre of Fort Pillow. I remember the fatal assault 
of Fort Wagner and the gallant Shaw sleeping there 
in the pile of his black followers. I remember the 
bloody fight and victory on the James, where the 
ground itself was black with dead. Ah, there is a 
debt of honor here ! And honor is never so sacred as 



354 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 

when it is due to the weak. Blasted and accursed be 
the soul that will forget these dead ! If they had no 
offices or honors, if they fought and died in the plane 
of their humility, — Thou just God, forbid that we suffer 
them now to be robbed of the hope that inspired them ! 

Do then simply this, which we have a perfect con- 
stitutional right to do, — pass this very simple amend- 
ment, that the basis of representation in Congress 
shall hereafter be the number, in all the States alike, 
of the free male voters therein. Then the work is 
done ; a general free suffrage follows by consent, and 
as soon as it probably ought. For these returning 
States will not be long content with half the offices 
they want, and half the power allowed them in the 
Republic. Negro suffrage is thus carried without 
even naming the word. 

Need I add, that now, by these strange fortunes of 
the rebellion rushing on its Providential overthrow, 
immense responsibilities are put upon us, that are 
new. A new style of industry is to be inaugurated. 
The soil is to be distributed over again, villages are 
to be created, schools established, churches erected, 
preachers and teachers provided, and money for these 
purposes to be poured out in rivers of benefaction, 
even as it has been in the war. A whole hundred 
years of new creation will be needed to repair these 
wastes and regenerate these habits of wrong ; and we 
are baptized for the dead, to go forth in God's name, 
ceasing not, and putting it upon our children never to 
cease, till the work is done. 



OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 355 

My task is now finished; only, alas! too feebly. 
There are many things I might say, addressing you 
as Alumni, as professors and teachers, and as schol- 
ars training here for the new age to come. But you 
will anticipate my suggestions, and pass on by me, to 
conceive a better wisdom for yourselves. One thing 
only I will name, which is fitting, as we part, for us 
all ; viz., that without any particle of vain assump- 
tion, we swear by our dead to be Americans. Our 
position is gained ! Our die of history is struck ! 
Thank God we have a country, and that country has 
the chance of a future ! Ours be it henceforth to 
cherish that country, and assert that future ; also, to 
invigorate both by our own civilization, adorn them 
by our literature, consolidate them in our religion. 
Ours be it also, in God's own time, to champion, by land 
and sea, the right of this whole continent to be an 
American world, and to have its own American laws, 
and liberties, and institutions. 



XL 

LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS, POPE GREGOEY XVL* 



Venerable Pontiff: — 

This letter, I am well aware, will be unwelcome to 
you. I shall speak plainly in it, and I hope I may 
suffer no undue restraint from the eminence of your 
position. At the same time, it is my design so to 
speak, that, if I seem to be your adversary in some 
things, you may still acknowledge me to be a respect- 
ful and not ungenerous adversary. I distinguish be- 
tween your office and your person. If then I exercise 
a degree of freedom, which indicates how little it 
signifies to me that you are the pope, let it soften the 
affront that your venerable age and, if I may trust 
the opinion of many, the more venerable inoffensive- 
ness of your gray hairs, require me to approach you 
with sentiments of personal deference, which I could 
not feel, either towards your office, or your peculiar 

* Published in London, April 2, 1846, on his return from Italy; 
afterwards translated into Italian and widely circulated ; recorded 
also In the Index Expurgatorius, and specified by proclamation, 
as one of the seditious publications to be suppressed by the 
Police. 

(356) 



LETTEB TO UIS HOLINESS 357 

religious opinions. Indeed, there is one thing only 
which withholds me in this duty. viz.. the question: 
Why should 1 trouble thus an old man's end': — Is it 
not unmerciful to meet him thus at his grave's edge, 
and upbraid him there with errors he cannot rectify 
and wrongs he cannot redress ': But I remember that 
thi- sorrows and miseries of your dominion are 
also old. — older far than you, and not less entitled to 
pity. I remember too. that an old man. who has 
pa^<cd over all the heights of honor and ambition, 
and has nothing left him but his Judge, will some- 
times be accessible to remonstrances which others 
could not hear. At the same time, what I shall for- 
mally charge will not be designed to lie against you 
personally, but only against the system which is repre- 
sented in you. and has you for its instrument. — I 
would fain hope its unwilling and. in some things at 
least, its unadvised instrument. — which if you dis- 
cover, what is it but the dearest privilege God has 
given you in life, that you may quit the world leaving 
your paternal testimony to the evils and wrongs it is 
too late for you to remedy '.' 

Let it not be a forfeiture of your good will or pa- 
tience, if I address you as a member of the Christian 
Alliance of the United States. That society has none 
of the atrocious designs you seem to have apprehended, 
judging from the bull you issued so promptly on 
receiving notice of its organization. It works no 
secret plots against your peace. Its object is openly 
se 1. namely, tu prepare the way for a reforma- 



358 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

tion of your church by rendering it accessible to truth. 
We believe that the time for using church penalties in 
place of Christian arguments, dungeons instead of 
doctrine, has gone by ; that a better day has come, 
one that better suits the rational and merciful spirit 
of Christianity. We combine, therefore, to express 
our grief at the dishonor you reflect upon religion 
by suppressing longer the freedom of religious faith 
and argument among your subjects. We believe that 
England and the United States have only yielded to 
first principles, in allowing your teachers the utmost 
freedom of doctrine within their borders ; and that 
you, in imposing a rigid silence upon our teachers in 
the Roman States, violate the same first principles, 
and that in a manner that is arrogant and offensive, 
as well as a bitter violation of our Christian rights. 
In one word, we ask of you to yield us and your sub- 
jects religious liberty, that is, to renounce force as an 
instrument of religion, that is, to give up a kind of 
slavery as much more cruel than any other, as im- 
mortality is dearer than the body, as much more 
impious as it is closer upon the rights of God. 

It is right to add that in making the tour of Italy, 
which I have recently done, I have acted in no respect 
as an agent of the Alliance. I came among you sim- 
ply as an ordinary traveler, though not without appre- 
hension, from the tone of your bull, that I must owe 
it to some oversight of your police if I was permitted 
to pass. I have seen of course what fell under my 
eyes. I have inquired, as every intelligent traveler 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 359 

will, and, perhaps, with a little more than ordinary 
diligence. Nothing has been more agreeable to me 
than to find, that in some things my judgments of 
vour system would bear to be softened, and where I 
have been able to find positive excellences or beau- 
ties in it, they have yielded me the sincerest pleasure. 
And yet, I return with a spirit afflicted by the dismal 
picture of what I have seen. The mournful image 
of your state follows me ; and I sit down to write this 
remonstrance, not without some hope of the blessing 
promised to such as visit them that are in prison and 
minister unto them. The sentiments I offer are my 
own, and are offered on my own responsibility. I 
only hope they will meet the general approbation of a 
society in whose dignified and merciful aims I feel so 
profound an interest. 

And first of all, I must protest against the dishonor 
you do to religion, by the kind of civil government 
you maintain, in connection with your spiritual office. 
It is, to say the least, a very extraordinary thing that 
you, who call yourself a minister and even vicar of 
Christ, should become just that royal person, or king, 
he dared not consent to be. This however you are, 
and if so, the responsibility is on you ; a responsi- 
bility measured not by the extent of your power only, 
but more by the sacredness of your pretensions. You 
assume to be the head of the Christian church, and a 
large part of the world have so little knowledge of 
any other form of religion, as really to suppose that 
you are the veritable representation of Christianity 



360 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

itself. And yet you have the credit, everywhere, of 
presiding over the worst government in Christendom ! 
To the traveler passing through your states, nothing- 
wears a look of thrift and happiness : no sign of im- 
provement meets the eye, which is not refuted by 
signs of decay and deterioration. As the dismal 
Campagna, once a region of fertility and teeming with 
life, circles Rome with silence and desolation, so in a 
political sense, every thing about you that partakes 
the nature of hope, of social beauty and public pro- 
gress, is withered away in the malignant atmosphere 
of your priestly despotism. 

Your ministers, all absolute, have yet no definite 
sphere of action, and are held to no responsibility. In 
their decrees, they perpetually contradict each other 
and you, encroaching too upon the tribunals of justice 
in contrary ways, as these do, in their turn, upon the 
jurisdiction and decisions one of another. Obedience 
is confused and baffled ; and wrong surrounded by so 
many rival functions, which ought to be its avengers, 
is obliged to buy its redress at so dear a price, that 
the public remedy is often worse and more cruel than 
the private injury. For, with few exceptions, every 
centre of power is the seat of some cabal ; and crea- 
tures, male and female, glide about the precincts, who 
are able, by the base and criminal secrets in their 
keeping, or perhaps, by terms of partnership well 
understood, to open or shut at will the gates of favor. 
Innocence is no protection ; for your criminal trials 
are secret, and have the character of all works of 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 361 

darkness. If a man lias property, there is really no 
chance for him but to run the gauntlet boldly, and 
escape with what he ean, or else to worm his way 
through by bribery. To exhibit talent, out of the 
priesthood, is suspicious and dangerous; spies are 
put upon watch for a reward, and exile most assuredly 
is near at hand. Your ambitious and greedy priest- 
hood have engrossed, not only the churches and the 
monasteries, but the spheres of education, the courts 
of law and all the higher magistracies ; even the min- 
ister of war must be a prelate. Every nutritive and 
stimulating hope is thus taken away from the youth. 
No avenue to advancement is left open save through 
the humble door of ecclesiastical dependence ; a fact 
which discourages every magnanimous struggle, and 
turns all the currents of ambition into the channels 
of hypocrisy, the meanest of sins. Never shall I for- 
get the sad look of a brilliant, accomplished youth, 
when he said : " Sir, there is no hope for us here ; the 
priests have taken every thing away from us." Mean- 
time, the more profitable forms of business you have 
sold, under favor, as monopolies. The contraband 
trade, which is now in profit, is also virtually sold, 
the duties by which it is created being kept up, it 
is seriously declared, by a continued intrigue between 
the smugglers and certain persons about the govern- 
ment. What is left after public favoritism has ex- 
hausted its smiles, and secret cunning its greediness, 
goes to the benefit of honest enterprise. Physical 
industry or labor, being naturally the most defence- 



362 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

less of all interests, sinks, of course, to a depression 
most hopeless and sorrowful of all. Then, lest misery 
should heave the sigh of impatience, or woe give vent 
to the unlicensed groan, you quarter on your impov- 
erished and dispirited States an army of soldiers large 
enough to keep the peace of an empire. Next you 
add another army of ecclesiastics, out of all proportion 
with their resources, and I should hope even with 
their sins, (at Rome one to every twenty-eight of the 
people,) and these subsist of course, by dead com- 
sumption too, and as a public burden. And then, as 
if earth could not yield ministers of exaction enough, 
you quarter on them also a third army of saints, who 
are the worst and most terrible scourge of all ; inas- 
much as they come down to chain the hands of indus- 
try one day in three of the working days of the year. 
Possibly your people might bear up and thrive under 
your terrestrial exactions, but when heaven comes 
down to mock them, the struggle is unequal. What 
people bereft of a whole third part of their industry, 
what people having all habits of industry broken up, 
and turned into the street, as every observer knows 
your people are on the saints' days, thus to spend a third 
part of their time in compulsory idleness, could long 
retain a vestige of thrift or virtuous economy ? In- 
deed, I had never such a sense of the prolific bounti- 
fulness of nature, as when I looked on the immense 
army of dead consumption you had brought to the 
prey without producing a general starvation. 

To complete the misery of this picture, we have 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 363 

only to add that you have blasted the homes of your 
people, and made them dry of comfort ; for it is here 
that the oppressed of other nations are ever able to 
mitigate the bitterness of their sorrows, by the free- 
dom of domestic love and sympathy. Your confessors 
are continually at work, as your agents of police, 
hunting after the symptoms of discontent; busied 
every where, in scenting out, if possible, even the un- 
easy thoughts of misery. Often have I heard it boasted 
at Rome, that your confessors make such an admira- 
ble police ! You have a confessor between every wife 
and her husband, and between both and their child- 
ren ; so that if one lisps a free thought, or vents a sigh 
at the table, the story, he knows, will be wormed 
out of some one in the family ; and then if he escapes 
the prison, he must try what it is to wear out, by 
penance, the dissatisfaction he sought to ease by ex- 
pression. They must keep their secrets, therefore, to 
themselves, they must not trust each other. There is 
no freedom at the hearth, the table is a gathering of 
spies, and the last relish of earthly comfort heaven 
gives to soothe the misery of oppression is taken away. 
It must follow, of course, that your people are de- 
pressed in their character as they are in their circum- 
stances ; a point about which no traveler is long in 
doubt. He remarks, first of all, the generally fine 
physical mold of your people, the look of brilliancy 
and genius so common among them. But it requires 
a short time only to detect the melancholy want of all 
that is akin to magnanimity in their character. They 



364 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

are passionate, cruel, servile, faithless to a proverb, 
and mournfully destitute of all habits of industry, 
order, and providence. I say not this of all but of the 
many ; and I charge it upon you, that reigning over 
them in the name of a religion that promises to exalt 
them to a godlike image, you have sunk them even 
below the physical mold of their nature ; reduced them 
to a deeper ignominy than sin, without your aid, was 
able. Was it not some painful consciousness of this, 
which induced you to undertake a more general plan 
of education ? I was about to thank you for 
it ; but why is it that when you undertake a duty 
which approaches the Christlike character, you inva- 
riably add some mark that is opposite to the genius of 
Christ's religion ? Why is it, for example, that you 
teach, as I was told you do, the geography of Italy, and 
forbid the geography of the world ? Are you afraid to 
let your people know the world which Christ under- 
took to make one brotherhood in the truth ? — afraid 
lest possibly some mischievous desire of liberty or 
light should be wakened in them by the nobler his- 
tory and happier state of other communities ? You 
have a little newspaper too, just as you have a little 
geography. It is about the size of a window pane, 
and it is distinguished by the fact that every matter 
is carefully sifted out which can possibly provoke an 
opinion. Nay, the readiest way for a Roman to find 
out what is going on in Italy itself is to take an 
English or French newspaper. And is it thus, or by 
sue!) kind of instruments, that you expect to redeem 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 365 

the character of your people, and fche dishonored name 
of your governmenl ': Air you so blind as to think 
thai you can give your people a standing as men, in 
such an age as this, without light, without a knowledge 

of the world, — the empires between which it is distrib- 
uted, and the institutions by which they are distin- 
guished? 

Possibly these strictures on your government may 
£e, in some particulars, erroneous ; but their general 
correctness is evident to the eyes of your people and 
of all travelers. Perhaps you will plead, in answer to 
them, the distinctness of your civil and ecclesiastical 
rule, and that any apparent failure in your civil de- 
partment must be taken by itself and attributed to 
historical causes separate from your religion. On the 
contrary, it will be found that every one of the marks 
of civil depression which I have named, if you review 
the catalogue, is the legitimate fruit of ecclesiastical 
causes, and of nothing else. Of this, I can give you 
also even statistical proof. I saw it established, not 
long ago, by a curious collation of statistics from the 
several states of Italy, though the document is not now 
within my reach, that the deficiency of exports in the 
several states, the want of education, the severity of 
the public burdens, the number of crimes and of 
illegitimate births, is just in proportion to the number 
of ecclesiastics ! Rome, the spiritual city, the metropo- 
lis of the church of God, having the greatest number 
of ecclesiastics, is worst and basest of all. God grant 
you the Christian sensibility to weep over a fact so 
humiliating. 



S66 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

Consider, a moment, how you stand before us and 
the world. We find you exercising kingly power. 
You tell us also, that you are the chief bishop of the 
church of God, and the representative of Christ on 
earth. We expect you, therefore, as king of the 
Roman States, to show us the most benign govern- 
ment in the world ; the most enlightened, most mag- 
nanimous, freest, happiest people. But you make it 
instead the public shame of the Christian religion, that 
every good interest of society is blasted under it. All 
calculations based on the benignity of Christian virtue 
are disappointed, and nothing is left us but the infer- 
ence that, if Christ is indeed represented in you, then 
is Christ one of the most malignant obstacles to the 
advancement and happiness of mankind. The infer- 
ence is irresistible, and what is more, it is taken. And 
therefore, in the name of the Christian world, I pro- 
test against the delinquencies by which you furnish so 
baleful an argument. I do not say, or believe, that 
you are a tyrant. I have seen no one of your people 
who has that opinion of you. But the misery is that 
your ecclesiastico-civil fabric has made your place the 
place only of a tyrant. You are set by your office, in 
the centre of a system of oppression, to preside over 
it; so that if you do not overflow your office in some 
positive demonstrations of mercy that amount to a 
revolt against the system, you really act the despot, 
with only the better grace for your gentle intentions. 
You are called, in the style of your office, the pope, that 
is, the father of your people ; and doubtless you take 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 367 

an amiable pleasure in the designation. Would thai 
your unhappy ignorance ot a relation so beautiful did 
not make it easier to deceive yourself here, than it 
miglri be. Where arc the signs of that mutual con- 
fidence, that freedom of manner, that tenderness of 
protection answered by tenderness of respect, which 
mark the true paternal relation ? Is it paternal when 
you go to your worship through files of soldiers? Is 
it paternal when you are seen hiring regiments of 
mercenaries, because you cannot trust the fidelity of 
of your people ? Every few years they break out in 
revolution, and the troops of Austria are sent for to 
save you from defeat and expulsion. It is perfectly 
well understood by the world, you yourself under- 
stand it also, that there is no day in the year in which 
you would not be driven out of Italy, if your people 
were left to their will. I see nothing paternal in this. 
I look in vain for some scene of fatherly benignity, 
where you take your children to your arms in freedom, 
and receive their filial demonstrations. The nearest 
approach to it I have discovered is, when you arc seen 
borne through the air above them, waving your bless- 
ing. But when this pageant is over, you slink away 
into the recesses of the Vatican, like some Eastern 
despot, with sentinels to guard your sleep ; and if a 
revolution should break out before morning, you have 
a postern key under your pillow, and a covered gallery 
of masonry strung through the air, a half mile in 
length, through which you may slip into the fort of 
St. Angelo, and take refuge behind the artillery! 



368 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

There your gun-powder paternity waits to caress its 
children. 

But I must draw myself a little closer, and speak of 
things that lie within the sacred province of religion, 
not Jiowever, to any great extent, of things most con- 
nected with the internal merits of your system; for, as 
questions of this nature are in dispute between you and 
Protestants, I could hardly expect by any mere state- 
ments to carry your convictions with me. But there 
are things a little farther off where I shall have less 
difficulty, and where, if I am successful, it will answer 
my purpose very nearly as well. 

Between you and your priests, it is a thing perfectly 
well understood that your religion is not intellectual. 
To act on men through truth, to address their under- 
standings, to sanctify them through the truth, is not 
your plan. You are as cautious to limit knowledge 
as you are to give it, and you consciously appeal to 
superstition as often as to reason. This is the more 
unworthy of you, because you so often and so justly 
make it the praise of your church that, in a former 
age, when the many were struggling up into the light 
from under their oppressions, she entered into their 
case and strove with them. It was a noble office, and 
nobly fulfilled. The more should it mortify you, that 
you can praise so earnestly what you shun so care- 
fully. You are afraid, — are you not ? — that more 
light, a more elevated manly habit, a spirit less en- 
thralled and humiliated by superstition, would neces- 
sitate some change or reformation in your system. 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 369 

You haw mortgaged yourselves also to the cause of 
legitimacy and despotism; hoping, as it seems to me 
very absurdly, to gain strength by foreign alliances; 
when the real cause of your infirmity is that your 
system Is rotting down on its own base. Thus it is 
that you try no more to exalt them that are of low 
degree. You come as ministers of light, but secretly 
afraid of light, and more careful to measure it than 
to give it. This I say is not concealed from your- 
selves ; you know that you are putting your church 
into a false position, though to save it ; you wish it 
were not necessary ; you are secretly ashamed of it : 
the penalty is to come. 

You are equally ashamed, I am sure, of the relics 
and the old wives' fables concerning them, w^hich the 
former ages, so rmcomfortably for you, grafted into 
your infallible system. You have here a holy coat, 
and there another, — a half-dozen holy coats, — all cer- 
tified by your predecessors, if I rightly remember, to 
be the veritable seamless robe of Christ. You have 
as many napkins or sudoria on which he wiped his 
bloody face in his passion. You have the spear that 
pierced his side, and the cross on which he expired. 
Here you have a church, where the very foot-prints 
are shown which St. Peter left miraculously indented 
in a marble pavement when on his way to Rome. 
Another is built to receive the chains he wore in 
prison. A third exhibits the altar at which he said 
mass. A fourth contains the very stairs of Pontius 
Pilate, which Christ ascended when lie was taken 



370 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

before him. A fifth preserves the very table at which 
Christ celebrated the first supper, and the porphyry 
pillar on which the cock stood, when he crowed as a 
sign of rebuke to Peter. A sixth contains the cradle 
in which Christ was rocked ; and the seventh, if not 
the very infant that he was, a bambino carved in 
heaven to represent him and brought down by angels. 
So also, you have the bones of the magi, the Virgin's 
girdle, pictures by St. Luke, and I know not how 
many silly trifles, which you call sacred relics. You 
are obliged to call them so, because they are part of 
your infallibility. If you display them to the multi- 
tude to work on their superstitions, you must also 
exhibit them before men of sense ; a formality which 
is quite as visibly trying to your self-respect as to 
their gravity. Then you have ceremonies, which you 
understand as well as I are only solemn fooleries in 
the sacred name of God and religion ; such,ior exam- 
ple, as that festal day of buffoonery, when the cattle 
and horses are brought to St. Antonio to receive the 
priestly blessing. It is well for you, that the animals 
are under a restraint of nature, else they might laugh 
in your faces. As to the celibacy of the clergy, I 
know very well that you are not yet ready to own it a 
delusion. The same clinging to infallibility which 
perpetuates the blessing of the horses, after the ab- 
surdity of the ceremony is felt, perpetuates also this, 
and doubtless there is as much true sanctity imparted 
by one as by the other. A sad chapter of history is 
here. I will not so far insult your understanding, as 



POP! GREGORY XVI. 371 

to suppose thai you have tailed to learn from it to 
entertain the most serious doubts of this special kind 
of sanctity : or your love to Christ's lienor, so far as 
to suspeci that if the question were now a new one, 
you and your priesthood would not face the proposed 
rule of celibacy with your most earnest protestations, 
as offering to men spurious notions of virtue, and 
fraught with bitter mischiefs to the church. 

It is the doctrine also of your church, I believe, 
that you are its earthly head, and, in your official 
capacity, infallible. I would fain like to know what 
you yourself think of this ? Do you find any spot in 
you for the infallibility they speak of ? I saw you two 
or three times during my stay at Rome. I should 
have said that you might be a man of worth and mod- 
esty, but I had no suspicion at all that you were in- 
fallible in any sense. It is not claimed, I believe, that 
you are infallible in your character, but in your office 
only. Is it then your happiness, let me ask, that you 
have fallen into no official mistake since you came 
into your office ? Are your decrees and measures, like 
those of the Almighty, the expression of a perfect 
wisdom ? Is it possible that you are clear of the 
ordinary pains of fallibility, the uncertainty of half- 
seeing, the timidity of planning without foresight, the 
indecision of measures that may possibly end in un- 
known mischief? If so, your modesty may restrain 
you from professing so great happiness, — do you then 
feel it? Quite sure I am, that whatever there is of 
Christian humility in you is hurt and offended by 



372 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

these pretensions. You secretly nauseate them ; you 
wish it were possible to be excused from the legacy of 
disgust the church has left you in this doctrine. 

It is also a favorite representation of your office, 
that you are the lineal successor of St. Peter. It is 
not within my object to deny that you are. I only 
say, that if you are the successor of St. Peter, there 
is certainly much for you to do, a large reform to 
make in order fully to justify your claim of successor- 
ship. Until then, it must savor too much of irony. I 
saw your three magnificent palaces, seats of regal 
majesty which the most splendid monarch in the rich- 
est and most populous empire of Europe might envy. 
I remembered that the money which sustains this 
royal ostentation is wrung out of a small state and 
a poverty-stricken people, who have also to support 
the splendors of the cardinals, and the golden liveries 
that flame about the gates of the Vatican, — did I see, 
in this, the unambitious manners, and the tender 
ministry of the fisherman of Galilee ? I turned to his 
words. I found him saying: "Feed the flock of 
God." Do you call this feeding the flock ? I visited 
your palace on the Quirinal ; I traveled through the 
halls adorned with regal splendor, and more than regal 
art ; I looked out from your terraced gardens, which 
overhang the city as proudly as the palace of the 
Caesars in the days of the Empire ; I noticed in parti- 
cular the paraphernalia of luxury and pleasure on 
every side, — your billiard tables, your grottos of statu- 
ary, your closeted bowers, your musical fountains, and 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 373 

the ingenious lollies you have prepared to frighten the 
ladies ; 1 mt pardon me it' 1 could not bring myself to 
regard this kind of machinery as exactly fitted to the 
serious and responsible officeof one who keeps the souls 
of the world ; least of all, to the successor of that hum- 
hie, unambitious apostle, who took the legacy of poverty 
and fiery trial his Saviour left him, bore it in rough 
earnest as a rough man only could, and therein greatly 
rejoiced. The stores of artistic wealth you have gath- 
ered round you in the Vatican have a high dignity. 
A cultivated sense of beauty is, at least, an accom- 
plishment, and one which, in itself, is innocent. But 
whosoever has wearied himself, day after day, in ex- 
ploring the streets of the Vatican palace, — that city 
populated by the pallet and the chisel, — will not think 
of you merely as exercising there the dry paternity of 
a monk towards the forms of beauty congregated 
round you ; but he will think of these accumulated 
stores as a pageant of ambition ; he will fancy the 
priest engaged to rival the prince, and not displeased 
with his victory. When it goes out, therefore, that 
you are here as the anointed successor of an apostle, 
even the apostle Peter, what has Peter to do with the 
Vatican, or the lord of the Vatican with Peter ? What 
bond of connection is there between the apostle of the 
fine arts and the apostle Peter ? 

Nor will your worship in the Sistine chapel any 
better assimilate you to your supposed predecessor 
and the manner of his time. Woman cannot enter 
there ; the wile of Peter himself could not enter, save 



374 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

behind a screen, lest her presence should disturb the 
flow of jour sanctified emotions. Xo profane laic can 
enter save in a dress coat. The judgment of the 
world is artistically transacted over jour altar, that 
jou may not forget, I suppose, at jour altar the 
judgment of the world. Sitting on jour throne, as the 
successor of the fisherman of Galilee, jour august 
person and the altar of the Lord are censed again and 
again with the common honors of worship. The car- 
dinals float about jou in stately trailings and gyra- 
tions to paj jou their homage, and kiss jour golden 
phylacteries; and jour slipper receives the humbler 
homage of those who can stoop lower. What now 
could Peter make of this ? What part of this pageant, 
what single item, do jou imagine ever to have been seen 
in the churches of the apostles ? Meantime I will not 
dispatch with a question another item of the scene, 
which I have not jet named. When the anthem rose, 
which was to lift our soul to God, mj ear was caught bj 
notes of a strange qualitj, — -not the voice of woman, not 
of man. I turned my eye to the little gallery opposite 
where I stood, and, through the open work of the 
front, I spied the scrawny, sorrowful-looking faces of 
the poor beings whom you have damned to a fall even 
out of nature, to serve the luxury of your worship. 
Merciful God ! Is this Christianity, the religion of him 
who came to exalt the poor and restore God's image 
in man ? That hour of disgust and indignation I shall 
never forget. And I declare to you here, the only 
place in which I can do it, that if there be a God in 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 375 

heaven who hears your anthems in the Sistinc chapel, 
the voices of these desecrated beings will go up, not 
as praise, but as cries for redress and vengeance. 
This cruelty is an insult to Christ, which we could not 
pardon in a harem ; what then is it in a sanctuary of 
worship ? Above all, what as an instrument of wor- 
ship ? 

The grand pageant of Christmas was only an exag- 
geration of the irreverent exaggerations of the chapel. 
1 pass by the attendant military pomp and preparation 
of the hour, and the imposing show of princes and of 
the great of the kingdom flowing majestically to their 
honored places. What do we see, at length, but a 
man, who is known as the successor to a poor pedes- 
trian apostle, riding in through the air ; borne aloft 
on the shoulders of men in a purple flood of glory ; 
and followed on each side, in stately march, by slowly 
nodding plumes of white, starred with the eyes of the 
peacock's feathers, — emblematic, it is declared, of the 
eyes of the whole earth, turning hither to behold the 
representative of God ! But when the bearers depos- 
ited their gilded burden, as they did very near to the 
place where I stood, I thought I could detect in your 
manner that you yourself were ashamed of the figure 
that was made of you. Pardon me, if in the excess of 
my charity, I make you feel as a sensible man and a 
Christian ought. And what, I could not but ask, 
would your favorite apostle think of this, if he were 
here 1 Poor fellow ! Most likely he would have lacked 
the dress coat necessary to come within the circle of 



376 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

gentility, and therefore could not have found a place 
near enough to look on his gilded successor at all. 
But I fancied him still in his weather-beaten cloak, 
and his brown plebeian face, hanging round among 
the distant crowd, and scarce restraining his indig- 
nant fire. Well was it for the occasion that he was 
not really there ; else, possibly, we might have had 
some demonstrations of the human Peter, as well as 
of the saint. I certainly would not like to engage, 
that when he saw the multitude wearing out the toe 
of his image by their idolatrous salutations, the old 
sword that cut off the ear, (unless before dispensed 
with,) would not have been heard clashing thick upon 
the demolished head of his representative. But re- 
turning to his better mind, he would doubtless blame 
the impetuous gust which had hurried him away, and 
he would go forth, weeping bitterly, to ask of his Lord 
in secret, what crime he had committed, that men 
should set up this grim idol in his name ? 

In the points I have here collected for your notice, 
I have purposely abstained from the grave questions 
between you and Protestants ; and yet I hope to have 
been even the more successful in this way in produc- 
ing a conviction, which cannot be dislodged, of impor- 
tant errors, and a grievous want of the original apos- 
tolic simplicity in your church. Indeed, I have only 
stirred convictions by which you must have been 
visited many times before. The age creeps round 
you, and whispers suspicions and uncomfortable dis- 
trusts ; you try to send them away, but they come 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 377 

back and loiter with pernicious obstinacy round you. 
[f you could make certain reforms, without shaking 
down your babel of infallibility, you would do it. But 
time is a stubborn teacher, and his day must come. 
What can you do with your infallibility, when it is 
already shaken, when even now it begins to seem a 
little fallible to you all ? See how easily you are dis- 
turbed, and how ready you are to find enemies that 
are going to overwhelm you ! No sooner does a little 
society come into existence, or rather propose to 
exist, the other side of the world, than you come forth 
pale from your conclave, and publish your solemn bull 
of caution to the flock. If a railroad is proposed by 
your people, that ordinary blessing which modern 
genius has offered to the internal commerce of states, 
you dare not assent to what other rulers so eagerly 
embrace as the most innocent well-disposed contri- 
vance in the world, because you fear lest new ideas 
may come in with new improvements. And doubtless 
you are right in this. A steam-car whizzing into 
Rome and by St. Peter's, bringing new faces from new 
worlds, stirring a motion, filling men's heads with the 
notion of modern improvement and the grandeur of 
the conquests over nature achieved by modern art, — 
what is this, but the arrival in Rome of the new age 
of the world ? Why, St. Peter's might as well never 
have been built. Type of immutability, confronted 
by the proof of change, — henceforth it is no better than 
an anchor that has slipped its hold. But the railroad 
must come, and the new ideas too. You may possi- 



378 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

bly delay their coming, but they will only break over 
you in the more terrible storm at last. If you are to 
forbid new ideas, you ought also to forbid the English ; 
for, if their money is convenient, their presence is 
dangerous. What poison more fatal than their En- 
glish manners to infuse into your Italian society ? 
Rely upon it, new thoughts are shaken from their 
skirts whenever they walk your streets. Their liv- 
eries flash newness in the eyes of your people. Their 
very money too, wearing the stamp of a protestant 
face, and suggesting the prosperity of a people who 
have equal laws, and a free religion, is a pernicious 
thing to look upon. No, if the English occupy the 
Pincian hill, it is vain for you to occupy the Vatican. 
You may keep their little church under quarantine 
outside the wall, but their new ideas will come in 
through the gate and over the wall, — nay, they will 
creep into your own windows, and those of your 
priesthood, and disturb at last the peace of you all. 
You may send for more troops, but your Swiss guard 
cannot fight away ideas. And the power you have in 
yourselves to fight them away is marvelously weak- 
ened, when once they have forced their entrance, and 
compelled you to feel their strength. For when once 
you begin to be a little disingenuous ; when, despite 
the many consecrated shams and superstitions out- 
lawed by time, and pomps whose glitter has changed 
to irony, all thronging round you Avith faces grinning 
mockery, you still endeavor to support the infallibility 
that has been so often flawed ; then begins a slow 



POPK GBEGOBT XVI. 879 

hut sure process of debauchery in you, which ener- 
vates not your integrity only, hut your will. Besides, 
what you hold by your will separated from all firm 
and hearty conviction is fcchly held of course. Merc 
will may be stiff enough for a short time, but, like a 
muscle long extended, it is sure at length to yield. 
You are just now trying, I know, to encourage your- 
selves in the hope of some unknown triumph, about 
to be achieved in England and, perhaps, in the United 
States. You are willing to believe that your cause is 
rising, and are even ready to imagine that the domin- 
ions you have lost are about to come back and own 
your allegiance. But the very signs by which you are 
cheered, I must warn you, foretoken rather an atti- 
tude of firmness and more compact resistance ; nay, 
it is well for you if they do not rouse a combined 
movement sufficiently vigorous to overwhelm you. 
Meanwhile, you arc losing in France and Germany 
ten-fold what you gain elsewhere. And Italy itself, 
you well know, is held to its allegiance by nothing but 
the Swiss guards and the foreign alliances ; alliances 
which may dissolve in a moment, as before the breath 
of God, on the occurrence of the slightest change in 
the attitude of the European states. To-morrow even 
may find you without any protector but God, which 
would be equivalent to your utter overthrow. 

What then do we ask of you ? If I have spoken 
of your administration in terms of decision, or ap- 
parent severity, it is because I could not otherwise do 
justice to the enormity of your oppressions, and the 



380 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

offensive baldness of your priestly frauds and usurpa- 
tions. See now, whether I will ask you to do what is 
wide of reason and charity. I do not propose to you 
Protestantism, as the standard of all wisdom and 
duty ; I simply ask you to submit your church to the 
open trial of truth in the field of religious liberty ; to 
withdraw your bayonets, close up the grim doors of 
your prisons, and bare your bosoms to the truth. If 
we are wrong, resist us by the truth : if you, then let 
truth convert you. Now, you hold your church by the 
tenure of a robber's castle, out of which you sally to 
depredate, and within which you may gather the spoil; 
whereas, it should rather be a city without walls, 
whither all may come at pleasure, but fortified within 
by law and equity. Doubtless, we have some attach- 
ment to Protestantism, and must be allowed to have, 
till you offer us what is better. That it is a great ad- 
vance upon Rome we are quite certain, but we are far 
from regarding it as a perfect thing. It gives too 
many signs to the contrary. How indeed, was it pos- 
sible for Luther, confronting your thunders alone and 
quailing himself every hour in the face of unknown 
perils, to settle, in so great want of tranquillity, a 
perfect system of truth and order ? Or how was it to 
be expected that a reformation begun by sin itself, 
like that of England, could be so washed by the care 
of good men afterwards, as not to come out with some 
bad stains upon it, whether we can see them or not ? 
Equally improbable is it that any reform has taken 
place in a church so badly corrupted as yours, with- 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 381 

out bringing truths to lighl thai are worthy of your 
Btudy ami adopt ion. A.ccep1 the good, reject the bad. 
The results you cannot use as models, use as antag- 
onisms or reactive forces to steady your inquiries after 
what is better ; for this is a help not insignificant. At 
the same time, it is not to be questioned that if you 
advance beyond us, your advances will accrue to our 
benefit, and assist the final settlement and harmony 
of the world's opinions. Therefore we regret the 
more the apparent infatuation that urges you still to 
cleave to your infallibility, and continue, in despite of 
the frowns of the age, to maintain by force what you 
dare not trust to argument ; for it is scarcely possible 
that some political intrigue, in which your friends 
may betray you, some fatal outbreak of the impatience 
of Italy, or some hostile combination from without in 
which the collected odium of the world shall pour its 
vials of wrath into your bosom, will not ere long in- 
terrupt your self-control, and tear you so violently as 
to make deliberation impossible. Then all the rich 
advantages that might accrue to mankind, through a 
new and original reformation of your church, are 
lost. 

It is a remarkable feature of this age, let it also be 
observed, that your religion and ours are becoming 
intermixed as never before. In France, the Protestant 
interest is rising daily. In the United States, a Cath- 
olic interest is increasing by emigration. In England, 
the action of the government and the late accessions 
you have gained from the establishment are placing 



382 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

you upon a more even footing. In Switzerland, Ger- 
many and the Austrian empire, the two religions have 
long been set in proximity. Everywhere their repre- 
sentatives meet each other face to face ; they inter- 
marry, they are fellow-citizens of the same state, they 
controvert, correspond, reason about and with each 
other. This letter to you is only a sign of the times. 
By means of the press, you are henceforth to stand 
out in the face of the world and be made a study, — 
which, if you have merits, it is well ; if not, then it 
is well. What now we want is to have this intermix- 
ture in Italy, as elsewhere, as we certainly know we 
shall have it, and that soon. Then, after that, let the 
ferment go on throughout the mass. If it be uncom- 
fortable to us all, still let it go on. If in this univer- 
sal interfusion Protestantism is dissolved by Roman- 
ism, and this again by Protestantism ; then, if it please 
God, let them dissolve, and it may be they will crys- 
tallize together. I will dare to trust anything to truth. 
Whatever cannot stand the free action of argument, 
let it fall ; whatever truth will modify, let it be 
modified. 

We ask it of you, then, to give us religious liberty, 
that is, to withdraw force as an instrument of relig- 
ious opinion. And what has God been teaching you 
of late, but to feel the humanity and justice of this 
demand ? I pretend to know nothing of the rumored 
persecutions of the Polish nuns, save that you and 
your people earnestly believed the story. And what 
have you been doing but filling Christendom with 



POPE GREGORY XVI. 383 

your indignant outcries agaiusi this inhumanity ? And 
what dul I hear from your priests and people at Rome, 

a IV w days ago, but the bitteresl imprecations against 
the Emperor of Russia, then present in the city; im- 
precations, I had reason to believe, that drew their 
bitterness from the feeling of the Vatican? But you 
need to beware lest the righteous impulses of nature 
in your bosoms betray you into hasty concessions. 
For if it is good for Rome to employ f oree as an instru- 
ment of religion, why not for Russia ? And if perse- 
cution is so ill for the nuns of Minsk, is it any better 
for the fifteen hundred nuns of Rome, should they 
happen at some future day to renounce your church 
and your doctrine ? If flogging or starvation is not 
good discipline for the opinions in Russia, is it any 
better in Italy ? Docs the virtue or validity of tor- 
ture depend upon the latitude? Better is it ingen- 
uously to adopt the conclusions to which the ready 
promptings of humanity lead you, and what you detest 
so bitterly in others for ever renounce in yourselves. 

I have heard it suggested that you are the last pope 
who will exercise temporal rule in Italy ; that the civil 
powers who have acted as your guardians are so much 
disappointed and chagrined by the incurable oppres- 
sion they find to be involved in a priestly government, 
as to have decided on leaving your successor a spirit- 
ual jurisdiction only. I know not what authority 
there may be in this rumor, but I hope for the honor 
of religion it may be true. But, however this may 
be, it is time for you and all princes to consider, 



384 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 

whether the melancholy spectacle of divisions and 
animosities in the Christian world is not caused by a 
denial of the rights of truth, and attempts to guard by 
force what force can only disturb. Whether, in 
short, as trade has laws of equilibrium and health, 
which are safest in their action when they act freely ; 
so also restrictions of force in the arguments and faith 
of men do not create, of necessity, false repugnances, 
and disturb the even balance of their opinions. How 
shall truth even hold her equilibrium, when it is not 
error she has set against her, but force ? Emancipate 
the truth of God, and it will be wonderful if truth 
does not emancipate us. There will be no sudden 
violent change perhaps, such as some men love to see, 
and such as you have the greatest reason to fear, in 
case you stand by your infallibility longer ; but error 
will melt away in the sovereign light of truth, and we 
shall melt together into the love of a conscious broth- 
erhood. 

One suggestion, and I leave you. I saw in the 
cathedral at Lyons, as I passed through that city, a 
proclamation of the archbishop, calling the faithful to 
pray for the conversion of England ; and I have since 
heard of a like summons proclaimed at Rome, and in 
other places, even as far distant as Constantinople. 
This, I said, is well ; it is at least a step in advance 
of the fulminations that were smoking through the 
kingdoms, on a former day, against this recusant em- 
pire. I only suggest, whether it would not have been 
a little more modest, if you had summoned your fol- 



POPE GREGORI xvi. 385 

Lowers, instead, to pray, not for the conversion of 
England to your opinion, but that you and all Christ- 
ians may be guided into the truth, wherever it is, and 
there embrace each other in a durable fraternity? 
Issue now this for your proclamation. Call upon the 
world to join you, and I will answ r er for it that all the 
recusant millions, who roused themselves against you 
in the days of Luther, will joyfully meet the summons, 
and a spectacle shall be offered, at which the world, 
and possibly other worlds may gaze, — all the divided, 
clashing hosts of Christendom bowed together before 
God, asking for the truth that shall end their disa- 
greements, and make them one forever. 

Pardon me now, if in this letter I have inflicted any 
unjust wound upon your peace, or spoken aught that 
savors of personal malignity. You are an aged man, 
waiting on the shore, and will probably be called to 
pass over before me. If I would not have you go to 
lay up accusations against me, I ought as earnestly to 
hope that you may so discharge the responsibility laid 
upon you by this letter, as not to be required to 

accuse yourself. 

Yours in the truth, 

HORACE BUSHNELL. 

London, April 2, 1846. 



XII 

CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS.* 



We are not among those who regard the Christian 
sects as equivalent to so many schisms. Neither is it 
necessary, in our view, to the unity of the church 
that it should be politically one ; indeed the polity of 
the Anglican establishment and that of the American 
Episcopal Church are as truly separate, one from the 
other, as the latter from the Congregational polity. 
As little is it necessary to the unity of Christ's body 
that the several polities should be similar to each 
other ; for here again it can be shown, beyond a reas- 
onable doubt, that the polity of the Anglican establish- 
ment is less resembled, as regards all practical pur- 
poses, to that of the American Episcopal Church, 
than the latter to the Congregational. So if we speak 
of brotherly love or the unity of the Spirit, it is clear 
that distinct and dissimilar forms of polity work no 
necessary detriment. How often indeed is it proved 
that proximity exasperates disagreements, and that 
men will only hate each other the more cordially, the 

* Originally published in the New Englander for 1848, vol. VI. 



CHRISTIAN com i>i; k ii i:\ > i v KNESS. 387 

closer the bond which unites them! Doubtless there 
is such a thing as schism, divisions thai axe wrought 
by evi] passions, therefore dishonorable, hurtful, and 
criminal ; and Buch is the weakness of our nature that 
there are doubtless vestiges of schism in all Christian 
bodies. Still it is our privilege, on the whole, and 
being our privilege, our duty, to regard the Christian 
sects, not as divisions, hut as distributions rather ; for 
it is one of the highest problems of divine government 
in the church, as in all other forms of society, how to 
effect the most complete and happy distribution, — 
such a distribution as will meet all wants and condi- 
tions, content the longings, pacify the diversities, and 
edify the common growth of all. Thus it may be said 
that the present distribution of the church, abating 
what is due to causes that are criminal, makes it more 
completely one ; just as an army set off into compa- 
nies and battalions, some trained to serve as infantry 
and some as horse, some with artillery and some with 
the rifle, undergoing each a form of exercise and dis- 
cipline peculiar to itself, becomes thereby not several 
and distinct armies, but, because of the orderly dis- 
tribution made, a more complete and perfect whole, 
and in the field an engine of greater power, because 
it unites so many forms of action and bears so many 
sorts of armor. 

At the same time, it is not to be denied that this 
manifold distribution of the church has its propriety 
in causes and events that imply a crude state, or a 
state of only partial development. Therefore, while 



388 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

we do not regret the distribution, or proclaim it as the 
public shame of religion, we may well desire a riper 
state, in which the Christian body shall coalesce more 
perfectly and draw itself towards a more comprehen- 
sive and catholic polity. The work of distribution 
and redistribution has already gone far enough, as 
most Christians appear to suppose. We see, indeed, 
that unity is rising now, as a new ideal, upon the 
Christian world. They pray for a closer fellowship ; 
they flock together from the ends of the world to con- 
sult for unity. A proper and true catholic church is 
before the mind as an object of longing and secret 
hope as never before ; it is named in distant places 
and by men who have had no concert, save through 
the Spirit of God and the spirit of the age. And if 
these are signs of capacity for a more catholic state, 
it may also be seen, in the few persons rising up here 
and there to speak of a more comprehensive faith, or 
to handle questions of polity and doctrine in a more 
comprehensive spirit, that there are powers coming 
into the field which possibly God has trained for the 
preparation of a new catholic age. Probably never 
until now has the world been ready to conceive the 
true idea of a comprehensive Christianity. Nor is it 
ready now, save in part. The idea itself is yet in its 
twilight, dimly seen, only by a few, — by none save 
those who are up to watch for the morning. 

Our object, in this article, is to say what we are able 
of a subject formerly so remote from the world. We 
confess that, in our own apprehension, we seem rather 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 389 

to stammer than to speak plainly. Still, as it is by 
stammering t hat we learn to speak, we go to our rudi- 
mental effort suffering no pride to detain us. 

What we mean by comprehensiveness, or a compre- 
hensive Christianity, may be illustrated in part from 
the manner and teachings of Christ himself, who is 
the Lord of Christianity. In nothing did Christ prove 
his superhuman quality more convincingly than by 
the comprehensiveness of his spirit and his doctrine. 
He held his equilibrium, flew into no eccentricities, 
saved what was valuable in what he destroyed, 
destroyed nothing where it was desirable rather to 
fulfill than to destroy. It is the common infirmity 
of mere human reformers that, when they rise up to 
cast out an error, it is generally not till they have 
kindled their passions against it. If they begin with 
reason, they are commonly moved, in the last degree, 
by their animosities instead of reason. And as ani- 
mosities are blind, they, of course, see nothing to 
respect, nothing to spare. The question whether 
possibly there may not be some truth or good in the 
error assailed, which is needed to qualify and save the 
equilibrium of their own opposing truth, is not once 
entertained. Hence it is that men, in expelling one 
error, are perpetually thrusting themselves into 
another, as if unwilling or unable to hold more than 
half the truth at once. And so if any advance be 
made, it is wrought out between battles and successive 
contraries, in which, as society is swayed from side to 
side, a kind of irregular and desultory progress is 



390 CHEISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

maintained. Thus if any human reformer had risen 
up to assail the tithings, washings, and other tedious 
observances of the Pharisees, observances the more 
easy to regard as odious because the men themselves 
were odious, — a sanctimonious race of oppressors and 
hypocrites, who live by farming the public supersti- 
tions,— this human reformer would have said : "Away 
with you hypocrites, and away with your works. Let 
your tithings go, and if you will do any thing right, 
come back to the weightier matters of judgment, 
mercy and faith." This Christ did not say. Detest- 
ing the cruelties and base hypocrisies of the sect, as he 
certainly did, he is yet able to see some benefit in 
their practices, some truth in their opinions. There- 
fore he says : " These ought ye to have done, and not 
to leave the other undone ; " comprehending, at once, 
the exact and the free, the disciplinary and the useful, 
offerings to God and labors for mankind. And the 
most remarkable feature in his sermon on the mount 
is the fact that, while he perfectly transforms the old 
doctrines and laws, he yet annihilates nothing. " I 
came not to destroy, but to fulfill, to bring spirit to 
form, to extend the outward law to the inward thought, 
to fill out the terms of knowledge and the statutes of 
duty, but to suffer no jot or tittle of the law to perish." 
It is by this singular comprehensiveness in the spirit 
of Christ that the grandeur of his life and doctrine is 
most of all conspicuous. For by this it was that he 
set himself in advance, most clearly, of his own and 
of all subsequent times. With men, if they ever attain 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 391 

to any thing of a comprehensive aim, it is only in what 
may be called the second age of the church or society, 
the historical and critical age. In the first age they 
truth : in the second they consider the seeings of 
others and their import. In the first age they regard 
the forms of truth as identical with truth itself; 
therefore they stand every man for his own form, 
having no choice but to live and die by it, and no 
thought, perhaps, but to make others live or die by it 
too. But in the second age, opinions become a sub- 
ject of comparison, their laws are inquired after, their 
forms become plastic, and are seen melting into each 
other. Under contrary forms are found common 
truths, and one form is seen to be the complement of 
another, — all forms, we may almost say, the comple- 
ment of all others. But it was in no such philosophic 
and critical method that Christ attained to so great 
comprehensiveness. He found it rather in the native 
grandeur of his own spirit. Speaking not as a critic, 
lnit as a seer, his simple seeing placed him thousands 
of years in advance of us, under all the lights of his- 
tory. We seem now to be just beginning to spell out 
in syllables, and by a laborious criticism, that which 
Christ seized upon as an original intuition. 

But we must enter, if possible, into the more inte- 
rior merits of our subject. It was given out a few 
years ago, by the distinguished French philosopher, 
M. Cousin, that there are in philosophy three possible 
& hools of opinions, which must each have an era to 
itself : one that begins with the ideal, or absolute ; a 



392 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

second that begins with the empiric or conditional ; a 
third which seeks to adjust the relations of the two, 
producing an ideal-empiric, or as he would call it, an 
eclectic school. Besides these three, he declares 
that it is even impossible to invent another. And the 
latter of the three he regards as the ripe school, one 
that will contain the last and fully-matured results of 
philosophic inquiry. Now as human life lies between 
the infinite and the finite, as regards thought and the 
objects of thought, having contact in fact with both, 
there is certainly a show of truth in the theory offered. 
The history of opinions too may be made, without 
any great violence, to yield it a complexion of favor. 
Still it is easy to show in what manner other and more 
various oppositions may arise, and how they may be 
multiplied almost without number. They are in fact 
so multiplied, both in philosophy and in religious doc- 
trine. 

Having it then for our subject, in this article, to 
investigate, as far as we are able, the causes out of 
which religious oppositions arise, and to suggest the 
true remedy, let us, first of all, glance at the methods 
in which the Christian world fall into so many repug- 
nant attitudes. 

Doubtless it is true, in part, as M. Cousin suggests, 
that many of these repugnances are due to the fact 
that the material of thought is itself divided 
between what is absolute or ideal, and what is actual 
or empirical ; so that a mind viewing any subject 
partially, that is from one pole, is likely to conflict 



CHBISTIAM COMPBEHENSIVENEBS. 393 

with one viewing it from the other,and both with one 
who endeavors fco view it from both poles al once. 

I ml there are divisions or repugnances, that arc due 
as much to the incomprehensibility of the matter of 
thought, as to the twofold nature of its contents. 
The matter of thought is infinite in quantity, as well 
as ideal or empirical in quality. Hence it results 
that, as the minds of men are finite, they can only 
pull at the hem of the garment, and must therefore be 
expected to pull in different ways, accordingly as they 
fall upon the hem on one side or the other. For as 
the garment is, to each, nothing but the hem in that 
part where he has hold of it, he is likely to make up 
his sect or school according to the view he has. But 
after long ages of debate, wherein every part of the 
hem is brought into view, then it is possible certainly 
for any disciple, who will look through the eyes of all, 
to form to himself some view of it that is broader and 
more comprehensive. 

Then again there are reasons for the rise of repug- 
nant views in thought and religious doctrine, which 
lie in what may be called the contents of persons. 
For it is not merely the contents of thought, but quite 
as much the contents of the thinkers, that give birth 
to contrary opinions and sects. We speak here of 
personal temperament, or of national temperament, 
working in the subject ; of that which history has 
produced, or waits to have produced ; of impulses, 
wants, all of which need as much to have their day 
and be tried, as the subject-matter of thought itself. 



394 CHRISTIAN COMPEEHENSIVENESS. 

For example, the Pelagian doctrine of will or self-sup- 
porting virtue, and the Quaker doctrine of quietism, 
may arise, in no small degree, from varieties of per- 
sonal temperament. And since temperament is as 
much a reality as thought itself, what can ever display 
the manifold forms of a perfect and complete doc- 
trine, unless temperament also is allowed to have its 
trial ? So also prelacy was produced by historic 
causes, that is, by impulses and sympathies historically 
prepared. So also of independency or equality. It 
was something in the convenience of political power, 
or private ambition, or Christian experience that pro- 
duced these repugnant methods of organization, and 
set them in conflict. And now, since they are both 
set before the mind as exhibited on trial, it is possible 
to decide with greater confidence on the method most 
congenial to the Christian scheme ; perhaps on a 
method that combines the excellences of both. 

There is yet one more source of repugnant and par- 
tial opinion, which is quite as fruitful as the others ; 
namely, language. No matter whether we speak of 
philosophic doctrine or of that which is derived from 
revelation, every opinion or truth must come into the 
world and make itself known under the terms of lan- 
guage. And all the processes of ratiocination, under 
which opinions are generated, are processes that are 
contained within the laws of language. But language 
can not convey any truth whole, or by a literal em- 
bodiment. It can only show it on one side, and by a 
figure. Hence a great many shadows, or figures, are 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 395 

necessary to represent every truth; and hence again, 
there will seem to be a kind of necessary conflicl 
between the statements in which a truth is expressed. 
One statement will set forth a given truth or subject- 
matter under one figure, and a second under another, 
and a third possibly under yet another. The doctrine 
of atonement, for example, is offered in Scripture 
under a great variety of figures, and a history of the 
doctrine up to this moment consists, in a great degree, 
of the thcologic wars of these figures doing battle each 
for the supremacy. For as soon as any figure of truth 
is taken to be the truth itself, and set up to govern all 
the reasons of the subject by its own contents as a 
figure, argument itself settles into cant, and cant is 
enthroned as doctrine. For cant, in rigid definition, 
is the perpetual chanting or canting of some phrase 
or figure, as the fixed equivalent of a truth. And 
hence, as most men who speculate, both in philosophy 
and religion, are not fully aware of the power of words, 
or how, if they place a truth under one word in dis- 
tinction from another, it will assuredly run them into 
dogmas that are only partially true, successive dogmas 
in theology or philosophy are perpetually coming upon 
the stage, and wearing themselves down into cant to 
die, — in which, though they resemble themselves to 
the swans, it is yet with a difference ; for the swans 
only sing when they die, but these sing themselves to 
death. The number of contrary theories that may be 
gathered round a given subject is limited, of course, 
only by the number of figures adjacent to it. 



396 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

Instead, therefore, of the single cause for repug- 
nant, or opposing theories, discovered by M. Cousin, 
we find as many as four classes of causes ; one that 
lies in the twofold quality of the contents of thought ; 
a second in the infinite quantity of the contents ; a 
third in the contents of persons, including society and 
history ; a fourth in the containing powers of lan- 
guage as an instrument of thought and speculation. 

On the whole, it does not appear that the theory of 
M. Cousin is sufficient. It is less defective as relat- 
ing to questions of philosophy or philosophic systems, 
for which it was specially intended, but it is defective 
even here. For nothing is more certain than that the 
thoughts and speculations of men are shaped by 
causes which do not lie in the quality of the subject- 
matter of thought. Far more extensively true is this 
in matters of theology or revealed religion, where so 
much depends on questions of fact or interpretation, 
— questions that are not determinable by any philo- 
sophic or a priori method. Still the doctrine he ad- 
vances that all questions of philosophy lie between 
two poles or extremes is one that has a vast and 
almost universal application. So also of his doctrine 
that, inasmuch as men are after truth and not after 
falsehood, it may generally be assumed that under all 
extremes advanced there dwells a truth. And these 
will hold equally well in matters of theology. 

Holding this view, it may seem to follow also, as 
asserted by M. Cousin, that there can arise about any 
subject or question only three schools of opinion, — the 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. ; J'.'T 

schools of the extremes, and a third school which 
undertakes to settle their relation, or comprehend 
them in a common view. And perhaps there can not 

in any legitimate way. Still it will be found in his- 
torical fact, that men do not always proceed in a 
Legitimate way. Other causes act upon them which 
do not lie in the subject-matter of inquiry. As we 
see them in actual controversy, they describe a history 
which may be well enough represented by the five 
stages or modes which follow. 

First comes up into the light one extreme and, with 
or without controversy, it is adopted. After a while a 
second school, looking the dominant opinion or prac- 
tice in the face, begins to see that there is something 
wrong or false in it, and rises up as an assailant, to 
assert the second extreme. Now comes the war be- 
tween extremes. The parties are certain, both, that 
they have the truth. They regard each other in their 
present half-seeing state, as wholly repugnant and 
contrary. The war goes on therefore, as a Avar be- 
tween simple truth and falsehood, which no terms of 
peace can reconcile, and which permits no issue but 
one of life or death. Probably the new extreme will 
prevail, and the old subside into a secondary place. 

Meantime, there is likely to appear a neutral school, 
made up of those who are disposed to peace, and 
deprecate war, and who cannot escape the feeling that 
there is something extravagant or excessive, (as there 
certainly is,) in both the militant schools. These are 
the moderate men who praise moderate things, tho 



398 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

wooden-headed school, who dread nothing with so 
great reason as a combustion of any sort. Hence it 
is the real problem with them to divide distances, and 
settle themselves down as nearly midway between the 
poles as possible. Sometimes they are called in deri- 
sion, "men of the fence," but they call themselves, and 
more correctly, neuters , that is, neithers ; for the real 
study and problem of their school is negative. It is 
not to find the truth as a positive form and law, but 
it is simply to find a position halfway between the two 
schools before them, — to be about as much and about 
as little one as the other. They are prudent, but not 
wise. They make a show of candor, without so much 
as a thought of the truth. But as men grow weary 
of controversy, and the passions that give zest to it 
for a time are seen to die out, and give place at last 
to a sense of disgust ; as extremes held singly are 
seen moreover to bring a sense of defect and weari- 
ness by themselves, the neutrals are very likely to get 
their turn and become the reigning school. The pub- 
lic are sick, why must their ears be stunned by the 
perpetual din of controversy? So falling into the 
sick-list of neutrality, one after another, the two 
schools of the extremes are gradually thinned away 
and seem about to be forgotten. But for some reason 
it begins at length to be felt that there is a very pe- 
culiar insipidity in this neutral state. There is noth- 
ing sufficiently positive in it to waken a resonant 
feeling in the soul. Plausibilities have taken the 
place of truths, and the diet is too thin to feed the 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 399 

blood. After spending thus a whole age or genera- 
tion midway between somewhere and nowhere, or 
rather between two somewheres, they begin to feel 
that neutralities, after all, are more sickening than 
controversies, and they arc willing, possibly, to go 
back and resume the old quarrel of the extremes, if 
it is only for the health of the exercise. 

There is also what is sometimes called a liberal 
school, which differs widely from the neutral, as hav- 
ing aims of a more generous quality. For while the 
timorous neutral is engaged to settle his position mid- 
way between extremes, the liberal is extending an 
equal indulgence to both. The former is moved by 
prudence to himself, the latter by charity to others. 
The virtue of one is moderation, that of the other 
tolerance. One lets go the truth to consult distances, 
the other admits that possibly we are all too distant 
from the truth and see it too dimly to be over positive 
concerning it. Xow most of the arguments and 
motives to liberality are of a reasonable and generous 
quality, and where the liberal spirit is connected with a 
rigid and earnest devotion to truth, it is a condition 
of health to itself and a mark of respect to others. 
But how easy is it to be indulgent to others, if first 
we are indifferent to the truth! And if liberality 
itself is made to be the virtue and hung up as the flag 
of a school, it is very sure to prove itself, ere long, to 
be anything but a virtue. Or if still it be called by 
that name, it will show itself to be the most un- 
Uluminated, most impotent and insipid of all virtueSo 



400 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

Having no creed, in fact, save that other men shall be 
welcome to theirs, — earnest in nothing save in vindi- 
cating the right of others to be earnest, counting it 
charity not to be anxious for the truth, but to be 
patient with all error, smiling indulgently upon all 
extremes, not caring how the truth may fare between 
them, — the liberal school makes a virtue of negation, 
and freezes itself in the mild and gentle temperature 
it has mistaken for charity. The word liberal is in 
fact a negative word ; there is nothing positive in it. 
And as words are powerful, no body of men, however 
earnest at the beginning, can long rally under this 
word as a flag, without making it a sacrament of 
indifference, and subsiding thus into a state which 
involves a disrespect to all the sacred rights of truth. 
But as life cannot long be endured where earnestness 
is lost, so the liberalist will begin, ere long, to feel that 
his supposed charity does not bless him. And now 
he will gird himself again for war, seize upon some 
post and fortify it, and though it do not cover a half- 
acre of ground, he will swear to die fighting for some- 
thing as better than possessing nothing. 

Having now the schools above-named before us: 
first the schools of the extremes with their wars ; 
then the neutral or the liberal school or both, succeed- 
ing and bringing in an age of dearth that cannot longer 
be supported ; we may see how a fifth school rises to 
complete the cycle and gather unto the truth her own 
true catholic brotherhood. There rises up now a man, 
or a few men, who looking again at the two extreme 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 401 

schools, begin to ask whether it is not possible to com- 
prehend them ; that is to receive, hold, practice all 

which made the extreme opinions true to their disci- 
ples ? The very thought gives compass or enlargement 
to the soul in which it is conceived. It ascends, as it 
were, to a higher position to look down upon the 
strifes of the race and use them as the material of 
its exercise, conveniences to its own final establish- 
ment and victory. In this effort to comprehend ex- 
tremes, it offers no disrespect, but the highest respect 
rather, to the great and earnest spirits that have stood 
for the truth and fought her battles, giving them all 
credit for their courage and devotion, and considering 
them, in fact, as the right and left wings of the field 
which it now remains to include in one and the same 
army. It is in fact a disciple of the extremes, taking- 
lessons of both, and ceasing not till it has gotten 
whatever good and whatever truth made their opin- 
ions sacred to themselves. In the endeavor to com- 
prehend extremes, it comprehends also both the views 
of the neutral and the liberal schools. The neutral 
was sure that there was some extravagance, some 
defect of equilibrium in the extremes, and this he 
thought to restore by dividing distances and holding 
neither. The comprehensive school restores it by 
holding both and bringing both to qualify and moderate 
each other. The liberal saw charity perishing in the 
earnest battle of the extremes, and required of itself 
a more indulgent spirit. The comprehensive school 
finds not only a defect of charity, but what is more, 



402 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

a real ground for charity, in the fact that both ex- 
tremes are only standing for the two poles of truth; 
earnest because they have the truth, and only quarrel 
ing because they have not breadth enough to see that 
they are one. In the comprehensive school it will be 
a first conviction that all serious, earnest men have 
something in their view which makes it truth to them ; 
therefore that all serious, earnest men, however re- 
pugnant in their words, have yet some radical agree- 
ment, and if the place can be found, will somewhere 
reveal their brotherhood. Therefore they are not only 
to tolerate, but to love and respect each other. Nay, 
they are each to ask, what has the other which is 
necessary to its own completeness in the truth ? And 
thus the comprehensive school, finding its liberality in 
the higher pursuit of the truth, will have it not as a 
negation, had exercise it not as a sacrament of indif- 
ference. It will be moderate without pursuing mod- 
eration, liberal without pursuing liberality, both be- 
cause it follows after the truth, giving heed to all 
earnest voices, and bowing as a disciple to all her 
champions. 

It is not our design, in giving out this distribution 
of schools, to place them all upon an equal footing. 
The first two and the last, the two extreme or parti- 
san schools and the comprehensive school must appear 
in their order ; they constitute the necessary condi- 
tions of mental progress in the truth, and truth can 
not find a complete and full development without 
them. The other two, the neutral and the liberal, do 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 403 

appear casualty or incidentally, and oi'ten hold an 
important figure in the real history of sects and 
opinions, and no sufficient view of the actual history 
of opinions can be given without some reference to 
them. They may both be regarded, perhaps, as 
spurious modes of the comprehensive school, actuated 
by some dim and undiscovered sense of the fact that 
there is, doubtless, a higher, broader truth, which, il 
it were known, would reveal an aspect of extrava- 
gance in the partisan strifes of the world. In this 
view, they may be looked upon as rudimental efforts 
preparatory to the development of a true comprehen- 
siveness. And therefore the proper dignity of a com- 
prehensive effort, guided by intelligent convictions 
and fixed laws of criticism, could not appear without 
some notice of the contrast between it and them. 

Having it for our design, in this article, to recom- 
mend the comprehensive spirit in religion, we are 
tempted, first of all, to speak of it as related to 
character itself ; for this is the radical interest of the 
subject, and the illustrations we may offer here will 
be familiar to all our readers, even to those who are 
unexercised in the higher abstractions of theology. 

The endeavor to comprehend all antagonisms and 
hold the just equilibrium of truth is the highest and 
most ingenuous that a human soul can propose ; one 
that God only can perfectly realize. Yet whosoever 
has but conceived such a thought gives some evidence 
therein of a resemblance to God, and lie is, according 
to the measure of his success, a truly great character. 



404 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

A comprehensive character is, in fact, the only really 
great character possible among men. And being that 
which holds the fullest agreement and sympathy 
with God, it is one, we are persuaded, that is specially 
valued and cherished by him. We shall find also by 
inspection, that all the defective modes of character 
in Christian men are due to the fact that some 
partial, or partisan view of duty sways their demon- 
strations. Sometimes one extreme is held, sometimes 
the other, and accordingly we shall see that, except- 
ing cases where there is a fixed design to brave the 
laws of all duty, the blemished characters go in pairs. 

Thus one man abhors all prejudice, testifies against 
it night and day, places all his guards on the side 
opposite, and as prejudgments of some kind are the 
necessary condition of all judgments, it results, of 
course, that he falls into an error quite as hurtful and 
more weak, ceasing to have any fixed opinion, or to 
hold manfully any truth whatever. Another, seeing 
no evil but in a change of opinions, holds his opinions 
by his will and not by his understanding. And as no 
truth can penetrate the will, he becomes a stupid and 
obstinate bigot, standing for truth itself, as if it were 
no better than falsehood. 

There is a class of Christians who specially abhor 
a scrupulous religion. It is uncomfortable, it wears 
a superstitious look, and therefore they are moved to 
assert their dignity by venturing out occasionally on 
acts or exhibitions that are plainly sinful. And then 
when they return to their duty, which they are quite 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 405 

certain finally to omit, they consent to obey God, not 
because of the principle, but because of the import- 
ance of the occasion ! In expelling all scruples, they 
have made an exile of their consciences. A man at 
the other extreme will have it for his religion to be 
exact in all the items of discipline, and will become 
so conscientious about mint, anise, and cummin, that 
no conscience will be left for judgment, or mercy, or 
even for honesty. 

Some persons are all for charity, meaning by the 
term a spirit of allowance towards the faults and 
crimes of others. Christ they say commands us not 
to judge ; but they do not observe that there are things 
which we can see without judging and which, as they 
display their own iniquity, ought to be condemned in 
the severest terms of reprobation. Charity will cover 
a multitude of sins, — not all. The dearest and truest 
charity will uncover many. Opposite to such, we have 
a tribe of censorious Christians, who require us to be 
bold against sin, who put the harshest constructions 
on all conduct, scorching and denouncing as surely as 
they speak. If they could not find some sin to de- 
nounce, they would begin to have a poor opinion of 
their own piety. These could not even understand 
the Saviour, when he says, " neither do I condemn 
thee." 

Some Christian professors are so particularly pleased 
with a cheerful spirit, and so intent on being cheerful 
Christians themselves, that they even forget to be 
Christians at all. They arc light enough, free enough; 



406 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

the longitude of face they so much dread is effectually 
displaced. Indeed the godly life, prayer, sobriety 
itself, are all too sombre for their kind of piety. 
Opposed to these we have an austere school, who 
object to all kinds of relaxation, and have even some 
scruples about smiling. A hearty laugh is an act of 
positive ungodliness. They love to see the Christian 
serious at all times. Their face is set as critically as 
the surveyor's needle, or they carry it as nicely as they 
would carry a full vessel. But there is a certain meas- 
ure of sourness in all human bosoms, which if it can 
not be respited by smiles, becomes an active leaven. 
The face that was first serious changes to a vinegar 
aspect, and this reacts to sour the sourness of nature, 
till finally it will be found that the once amiable per- 
son has become nervous, acrid, caustic, and thoroughly 
disagreeable. 

We have a class of disciples who appear to sum up 
all duty in self-examination. They spend their lives 
in examining and handling themselves. They examine 
themselves till they are selfish, and extinguish all the 
evidences for which they look. They inspect and 
handle every affection till they have killed it, and 
become so critical, at length, that no feeling of the 
heart will dare venture out, lest it should not be able 
to stand scrutiny. Another class have it for a maxim 
never to doubt themselves. " Let us do our duty," 
they say, " and God will take care of us." So they 
delve on, confident, presumptuous, ignorant of them- 
selves, guarded against no infirmity. But they might 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 407 

about as well do nothing in the name of duty, as to go 
on with a spirit so ill regulated, and if they knew it, 
so very nearly wicked. 

There is a class of disciples who especially love pru- 
dence. It is the cardinal virtue. They dread, of 
course, all manifestations of feeling, which is the same 
as to say that they live in the absence of feeling ; for 
our feelings are the welling up of the soul's waters, the 
kindling of its fires, when no jealousy is awake to sup- 
press them. If they are watched, they retreat to their 
cell, — joy, love, hope, pity, fear, — a silent, timorous 
brood that dare not move. The prudential man be- 
comes thus a man of ice, or, since the soul is borne up 
and away to God only on the wings of feeling, sinks 
into a state of dull negation. Then we have another 
class who detest the trammels of prudence, and are 
never in their element save when they are rioting in 
emotion. But as the capacity of feeling is limited, it 
comes to pass in a few days that what they had is 
wholly burnt to a cinder. Then as they have a side 
of capacity for bad feeling still left, new signs will 
begin to appear. As the raptures abate and the high 
symptoms droop, a kind of despair begins to lower, a 
faint chiding also is heard, then a loud rail, then bit- 
ter deprecations and possibly imprecations too ; 
charges are leveled at individuals, arrows are shot at 
the mark, and the volcanic eructations thrown up at 
the sky are proofs visible and audible of the fierce and 
devilish heat that rages within. This is fanaticism, a 
malicious piety, kindling its wrath by prayer and holy 
rites. 



408 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

In these examples we have brought into view ex- 
tremes that are furnished principally out of the con- 
tents of persons. How manifest is it that each of 
these extremes, embracing its opposite, would rest in 
a balanced equilibrium on the two poles of duty, and 
be itself the wiser and the holier for that which is now 
its mischief and its overthrow ! 

There are other classes of extremes affecting the 
character, which are more speculative in their nature. 
What endless wars have we between the school of 
reason and the school of faith. But the truly enlarged 
disciple will somehow manage to comprehend both, 
considering it to be the highest reason to believe, and 
the highest faith to reason. One man places virtue in 
action, another in feeling. Possibly it is in a moral 
standing of the soul to which it ascends between 
both, — action inspired by feeling, feeling realized by 
action, — thus in the moral liberty of the whole man. 
One class consider Christian piety to be a Godward 
and devotional habit. Another class are equally sure 
that God is pleased with us when we do our duties to 
our fellow-men. Thus we have pietism or quietism 
on one side, and philanthropy on the other. But the 
comprehensive word commands us to do justly, to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with God ; to love God 
and through him love our brother, to love our brother 
and to see therein that we love God. Some are 
justified by faith, some by works. But as faith with- 
out works is dead, and works without faith are equally 
so, there are some who prefer to show their faith by 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 409 

tlicir works, and quicken their works by faith, and 
thus to be alive in both. There is also a school of 
Legalists, and a school of spiritualists. The former 
live without liberty, the latter without law. But the 
true Christian soul is free in the law ; for it is the art 
of love to hold a soul under discipline, and beguile it 
still of all sense of constraint. Some resolve all duty 
into self-interest. Others are equally sure that all self- 
interest is criminal. Possibly self-interest may offer 
motives that will bring the soul up unto God and pre- 
pare it to such thoughts that it will freely love God 
and duty for their own sake, and thus go above self- 
interest. So one person is for experience, another for 
habits ; one for sentiments, another for principles. 
But God is comprehensive, working all in all, only by 
diverse operations. A large body of Christians insist 
on a perfectly uniform exercise in religion. Another 
body are for new scenes and high demonstrations. 
But God, consulting both for uniformity and diversity, 
perfers to bring us on towards one by means of the 
other. 

So in all the possible views or aspects of Christian 
character, you will come nearest to what is great and 
Christlike, if you seek to unite whatever repugnant 
extremes are before you, — to be modest and yet bold ; 
conciliatory and yet inflexible; patient in suffering, 
sharp in rebuke : deferential to all men, independent 
of all ; charitable towards the erring, severe against 
the error ; at once gentle and rigid, catholic and ex- 
clusive, all tilings to all men, and one thing only to 



410 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

yourself. The more numerous and repugnant the 
extremes of character, excepting those which are sin- 
ful, you are able to unite in one comprehensive and 
harmonious whole, the more finished and complete 
your character will be. 

We have dwelt thus largely on illustrations derived 
from the department of practical character, because 
the tendency of mankind to assume opposite poles or 
extremes is here so conspicuous, and a matter so fa- 
miliar to observation. Our design is to get color, in 
this matter, for the more difficult branch of our sub- 
ject yet remaining. Man is not one being in the 
practical life, and another in the intellectual or specu- 
lative. Indeed there is no precise line of distinction 
between matters of practice and matters of opinion ; 
for practice molds opinion, and opinion practice. 
And it will be found that in all the contrarieties of 
character just set forth, the contrariety observed is 
due to the fact that character and duty are seen at 
opposite poles, and shaped in this manner by opposite 
opinions. 

Passing on now to matters of faith and doctrine, 
we shall see the same only more distinctly. And as 
all the extremes of practice go by pairs, so we shall 
find that sects and dogmas are set off in pairs about 
given points, and fighting each for its own opinion or 
pole, and thus that all the Christian sects stand to 
represent, in some sense, all the Christian truths. 
Which, if we can manage to comprehend, as we know 
they are acknowledged and comprehended by Christ in 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 411 

the unity of his own body, then we shall complete 
ourselves in Christian doctrine, and realize the idea 
of a true Christian catholicity. 

We do not, of course, maintain that there is no 
error in the Christian sects. A want of catholicity 
or comprehensiveness is itself error. To see any 
thing partially, or at one pole, is to see it insufficiently, 
thus in defective forms and proportions. Thus all 
sects and schools hold mixtures of error created by 
only half seeing what they see. Besides they are all 
instigated, in part, by evil passions and blinded by 
false prejudices, so that they not only fall into error 
by half seeing, but sometimes by wrong seeing also. 
Still it will generally be found, if we set ourselves to 
a careful scrutiny of the tenet or opinion which is 
distinctive in a given sect or school, that there is 
some real truth in it, however repugnant at first view 
to us ; something which makes it true to the school, 
and the school earnest in maintaining it. As a mat- 
ter of fact too, we have almost never seen a dogma 
advanced by any body of men, however monstrous, 
which, if it were dissolved and viewed in its contents 
historically, would not yield some important truth. 

Thus among the first efforts of the church to frame 
a doctrine of atonement, the death of Christ is often 
represented, and especially by Irenaeus and Origcn, as 
as a ransom paid to the devil. No representation 
probably could be more abhorrent, when taken on its 
face, to the feelings of all modern Christians. But 
if we can have patience to withhold our judgment 



412 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

long enough to take down the drapery of the lan- 
guage, or dissolve its figures, thus to separate the real 
truth of feeling they may have received, under a form 
of dogma so abhorrent to our speculative views of 
the subject ; in a word, if we can accurately conceive 
their historic state of mind, when advancing this rude 
theory of atonement, the first which unilluminated 
reason had produced, we shall find no difficulty in 
allowing that they held a warm and living truth, 
under a form so badly misshapen. 

No doctrine is sooner rejected, or more derided for 
its absurdity, than the doctrine of the real presence. 
But when taken with all the negations added in re- 
gard to the sensible form of the elements in the sup- 
per, it would be difficult to show that anything more 
is left than what every believing Christian ought to 
admit, viz., that the recipient of the supper is to meet 
therein a grace which is above sensation, and feast 
himself in the participation of the divine nature. 
Out of this great truth of the presence passing into a 
human philosophy, the doctrine of transubstantiation, 
and of a sacrifice, probably grew. The injuriousness 
of the doctrine is due, not to the fact that it contains 
no truth, but to the fact rather, that the disciple is 
likely to be confused and astounded as before a mira- 
cle wrought by the priest, and thus to miss of the truth. 
The exaggeration or over-statement smothers the 
truth contained. Meantime, is it not also possible, 
that the Protestant often misses the same truth under 
the doctrine of Zwingle ? He comes, we will suppose, 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 413 

to do ;m act, to use a symbol thai will assist him to 
remember his Lord ? But ii' he is wholly occupied 
with his own act, there is no commuuion. Be is only 
magnetizing himself . Communion implies reciprocity; 

and if he may not and does not receive the real Christ, 
there is no reciprocity. If therefore, Christ does not 
oiler himself there to be received by a presence above 
Bensation, or if the disciple does not believe it, then 
he is blinded by his rationalism as the Romanist by 
his superstition. Two things are necessary to the 
Christian idea of the supper. An act of reception 
which is an act of faith, and a matter to be received 
which is a matter offered to faith. If the Romanist 
omits the faith, how often, both in practice and also 
in theory, does the Protestant omit the matter of 
faith! When both poles are united, when Christ the 
matter of faith is offered to faith, and faith receives 
the matter offered, then is the Lord's body discerned. 
The Quaker doctrine of an inner light, however 
derided, contains a great and sublime truth. And if 
it be taken as antagonistic to the doctrine that all 
true knowledge is derivable to the soul through sense, 
whether as occupied with nature, or instructed by 
revelation, it might be difficult to say which is nearer 
to the truth. If one nullifies the word, the other 
nullifies the soul as the candle of the Lord. If 
the world is dark without Christ, so if the light that 
is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness, 
even having Christ before us! Without the inner 
light revelation cannot certify its truth ; for there is 



414 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

nothing in the soul to measure and discriminate truth. 
Without revelation visiting the soul from without, or 
through the senses and the understanding, the inner 
light of conscience and reason is provoked to no dis- 
tinct announcement of itself. There is a divine 
Word in the soul's own nature, but it shineth in dark- 
ness and is not comprehended till the Word becomes 
flesh and is represented historically without. And 
even then the natural man discerneth not the things 
of the Spirit, until the inner life of the soul is quick- 
ened to perceptiveness by the inbreathing of God. The 
Quaker and the Scripturalist therefore are both right 
and both wrong ; right in what they assert, wrong in 
what they deny. Unite the positive contents of both, 
and we have the Christian doctrine. 

The same may be said, in substance, regarding the 
Absolute Religion of Theodore Parker ; for this is only 
a modified Quakerism, a Quakerism whose inspiration 
lies in natural ideas and instincts, and not, to any 
extent, in spiritual gifts. Nor is any thing more true 
than that the soul is constituted for religion, much as 
he has represented. It is a great and divine truth 
also, one that revelation itself presupposes and actu- 
ally affirms. But if Mr. Parker had taken pains to 
inquire why God has set us in a sphere of sensation 
amid objects of knowledge and scenes of experience, 
why he did not make us mere absolutes ourselves in a 
world of geometries and bare intellectualities, he might 
have been led to suspect that the same reasons 
which determined to this, might require also historic 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 415 

revelations and even miracles. For if it be needful to 
live in a phenomenal world, if the absolutes of the 
soul are nothing worth, until they are brought forth 
into actual discourse, and represented and mirrored in 
the objects and scenes of experience ; if seeing and 
hearing, trial and work, are wanted to assist the abso- 
lute religion, why may not a Divine Word in the flesh 
be as needful as a Divine Word in the world ? At the 
same time, Mr. Parker is not to be answered by deny- 
ing the religious nature of the soul. If the soul were 
not a religious nature, the historic Word would be 
worthless ; and so, without the historic Word, the reli- 
gious nature, as a glance at the nations of mankind 
abundantly shows, will only baffle itself in its sins and 
become a blinded and bewildered instinct. 

Many persons are inexpressibly shocked by the Cal- 
vinistic dogma of unconditional election and reproba- 
tion, or of absolute decrees. But if they could sus- 
pend their mind long enough to sound its depths and 
measure its real contents, they would find a great 
and holy truth enveloped in it, one that is even funda- 
mental to God's empire, and necessary to the highest 
power of his government over souls, the same which 
has given to Calvinism a religious energy so peculiar. 
If it be understood that God enters into the actual 
historical world of men to pick out, unconditionally, 
one for life and another for death, there is abundant 
reason to be shocked by such a doctrine. But if we 
go above the actual to contemplate God before the 
foundation of the world, as dealing with intelligibles, 



416 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

or possibles, perusing systems of possibles, fore-know- 
ing theru and their contents, not as actual, or histori- 
cal, but as intelligible ; then instituting, or by a fiat of 
will actualizing the best and wisest, we shall see that, 
in putting that best system on foot, he has made it 
certain that all the contents of the system will emerge 
historically in due time. He has done it by an abso- 
lute unconditional decree ; for if he had not put the 
system on foot, nothing in it would ever become a his- 
torical fact. And having done so, every thing in it 
will, and he will not be disappointed. What he saw 
in the intelligible will emerge in the historical, exactly 
as he saw it. But not so as to exclude conditions in 
the actual. For the intelligible system he selected 
was a system linked together by innumerable causes 
and relations ; comprising activities to be exerted by 
himself, laws pronounced, works of grace performed, 
acts and choices of the subjects as they, in their own 
freedom or self -activity, would determine; results of 
character and destiny, such as his own good activity, 
and theirs, both good and evil, would produce. And 
here is the great truth of Calvinism. Having this in- 
telligible system before him, with all its ingredients, 
conditions, and results, God by an absolute decree in- 
stitutes the system ; which is the same as to say that 
whatsoever it contains will come to pass, — come to pass, 
that is, under the conditions, so as not to infringe upon 
the responsibility of any subject, and so as to justify 
him and his goodness in all. In this grand truth of 
Calvinism, God's will becomes a reality. The world 
is felt to be in his hands. He asks no leave to reign. 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 417 

Be reigns not blindly, or as a being baffled by un 
known contingencies. Trembling before his sover- 
eignty, we find it still a benign sovereignty, a rock of 
confidence and love. Unable to ascend above the 
actual and historical, the Arminian sees no other way 
to save the conditions of freedom and just responsi- 
bility, but to deny a truth so essential to God's gov- 
ernment. Probably the Calvinist, equally unable to 
get above the actual, asserts his doctrine of divine 
will and unconditional decrees, as holding under and 
within the sphere of actual history. One destroys the 
government of God, the other makes him a tyrant. 
And yet they are both asserting great and fundamen- 
tal truths. Unite the Arminian and the Calvinist, 
comprehend both doctrines, and we have the Christian 
truth. 

In these illustrations, it has been our object to show 
that, in dogmas regarded with the utmost repugnance, 
there is generally to be found some important truth, 
if only we have patience to look for it. In the same 
illustrations, we have also advanced the general pur- 
pose we have in hand, viz., to show that all the Christ- 
ian truths stand in opposites, or extremes that need 
to be comprehended. That something of this kind is 
true in matters of natural science is known to all. 
In the astronomic forces, in the chemical resolution of 
substances, in light and electricity, Ave discover nature 
lying between her poles, and science becoming a doc- 
trine when it comprehends them both. And in this, 
we have only a symbol of what relates to mind and 
spirit, the doctrine of man and the doctrine of God. 



418 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

Accordingly, the first thing to be done in theology 
is to reveal the poles, or the repugnant forms of truth. 
In all matters of moral judgment or intellectual opin- 
ion, there must be something in the nature of contro- 
versy to prepare the way. The elements to be com- 
bined or comprehended will thus be brought to light, 
and set up as distinct objects of contemplation. Then 
the man or the teacher that follows, holding himself 
aloof from the controversy, and looking calmly on as 
a spectator to ask, what do these combatants mean ? 
what great truth have they each in mind for which 
they are doing battle ? will almost uniformly find that 
they have one, which is some how reconcilable with 
the opposite. Accordingly, there is no one who has 
so great advantage, in arriving at the truth, as he who 
follows after a controversy, if only he has the inde- 
pendence of mind, and the implicit love of truth, 
necessary to improve his position. 

Our churches, for example, have been recently 
agitated by a warm and earnest controversy in refer- 
ence to the doctrine of spiritual regeneration. Ask 
what the antagonist parties are after, and it will be 
found that one is after the truth of divine agency and 
spiritual dependence, the other after the liberty and 
responsibility of the subject. In this case neither of 
the parties intends to deny what the other really 
wishes to maintain. Both assert our dependence, 
both our ability ; but one a dependence which to the 
other destroys all ability ; one an ability which to the 
other destroys all dependence. Never was there a 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 419 

better opportunity to settle the true comprehensive 
doctrine on this difficult subject, than when such a 
controversy going before has set up in full view the 
antagonistic elements to be united. But if w r e are to 
use the advantage offered, we must not be in haste to 
enroll ourselves as disciples or partisans. We must 
ascend to a higher and calmer position, where we may 
sec at once all the material offered us, and use it as 
material to be comprehended in a single view or doc- 
trine. Then possibly we may find that a soul under 
the bondage of evil is able to renew himself in good in 
and through dependence, able to work because God 
worketh in him. It will not be said that he has a 
natural ability which means nothing, nor a natural 
ability which means that he can do all by himself. It 
will not be found that God must dispense an ictic grace 
before he can put forth any right motion, which ab- 
solves the sinner from any attempt ; nor that he can 
regenerate himself, and is dependent on God only by 
consent or courtesy. But it will be seen that he can 
do nothing out of God, any thing in God. 

In the great question put in issue by the Unitarians 
concerning the Trinity, or the nature of God, it is 
difficult in a single paragraph to indicate the true 
comprehensive doctrine. But we are ready to express 
our firm conviction that the Unitarians will not be 
found to have stood forth in the maintenance of a 
pure error, when insisting on the strict unity of God. 
There was a kind of Tiinity maintained, and still is 
by many, which amounts to a practical triplicity, and 



420 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

breeds a mental confusion in the worshiper, that is 
both painful and hurtful. For this there was no remedy 
but to assert the absolute unity of the divine nature, 
and the position here assumed is impregnable. No 
doctrine of Trinity that infringes upon this can ever be 
maintained. Does it therefore follow, since God is 
one, that there is no conceivable tripersonality which 
can be vindicated ? Others may thus judge, but for 
ourselves we have no difficulty in perceiving either 
the meaning or the practical need of such a doctrine. 
For if there be a practical confusion in the triplicity 
held by many, there is a practical impotence in the 
bald philosophic unity and its representations, when 
rigidly adhered to, that is even more injurious to the 
life of religion. While our Unitarian friends, there- 
fore, are reposing in all confidence on their impregna- 
ble doctrine of the divine unity, it becomes them to 
remember that if they are not reasoned out of it they 
may yet be frozen out, which is quite as bad. For 
without a Trinity subjective to us and filling the forms 
of the mind, God is necessarily distant, unconversable, 
and without any adequate warmth to sustain our re- 
ligious vitality. Of this we feel quite as sure as we 
do of God's objective unity. If in saying this we 
seem to speak enigmatically, it is all we can say at 
present. We only express, in addition, our confident 
belief in the possibility of a doctrine that shall com- 
prehend all which the Christian world, on both sides 
of this great question, are contending for. For it 
would be singular, a philosophic anomaly passing be- 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 421 

lief, that all Christendom should have been standing 
for so many centuries, for that which, after all, is a 
pure phantasm, or hallucination. It is not in mankind 
to go after naked error in this way. Even when they 
stumble worst, it will be found that they have yet 
some semblance of truth. 

In the question of old and new, perpetually recurring 
in matters of religion, we have the bigot on one side 
asserting that nothing may be new, and the radical on 
the other, that nothing shall be old. And if Chris- 
tianity be a vital power in the church, both are true ; 
for the new must be the birth of the old, and the old 
must have its births, or die. The future must be of 
the past, and the past must create a future. And 
which is more violent, to make a future identical with 
the past, or to make a future separate from the past, 
it may be difficult to say. We shall commonly settle 
on the right view, when we have schooled down the 
bigot and the radical, and compelled them to coalesce 
in some common result. And this Lord Bacon has 
done most happily, in his masterly, comprehensive 
maxim, when he says : " We are the real antiquity." 
For in this he affirms both that all the wealth of an- 
tiquity is accumulated upon us, and that we have it as 
material out of which to make a future. If we cast 
off the lessons of antiquity, we are not wise. If we 
allow ourselves to be the mere ducts of antiquity, 
supposing that antiquity is to repeat itself in us, we are 
not wise. But we are wise only when we take note of 
the past, observe it carefully, study it respectfully, cor- 



422 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

rect ourselves by its wisdom and its errors, and apply 
it to fortify our own free judgment and use. 

Nearly related to this is the question of church 
authority and of private judgment. Doubtless there 
is just so much authority in the decisions of the past 
as private judgment can reasonably accept. More 
there cannot be. For to what do the advocates of 
' church authority appeal, but to private judgment ? 
They ask us, in fact, to give up private judgment, by 
an act of private judgment ; in which it will be per- 
ceived they set open the whole question. And what 
do we, on the other side, in asserting private judg- 
ment, but allow it for granted, that there are reasons 
and authorities under which we are to judge ? Un- 
less then we intend to say that the decisions and 
opinions of past ages, or of all ages, are to have no 
weight in determining questions, and are never to 
turn the scales of evidence, there must be cases where 
we are concluded by authority of the past. And how 
far different is this from an appeal to private judg- 
ment, in favor of accepting all the past ? For, if 
there be any one article of the past which it cannot 
accept, then it must be rejected under the question of 
giving up our private judgment, precisely as if it were 
cited only as an evidence offered to private judgment. 
True, it is maintained, on one side, that the church of 
the past has been illuminated by the Holy Spirit, so 
as to judge rightly ; but this again can be decided 
only by an appeal to private judgment ; and if the 
advocates of church authority could allow a truth so 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 423 

manifest, their difficulty with the advocates of private 
judgment would soon be over. The sound reality of 
the question would then be stated, and our passions 
would not be smoking round a mock question that, 
having no significance, admits no settlement. Now 
we have it before us, on one side, to shut our eyes, 
and accept the law of the past, which, if we do, we 
use our will to sacrifice our understanding, which is 
the most unmanly and basest kind of thralldom. Then, 
on the other, seeing that a tyrant is set up, who re- 
quires us first of all to put out our own eyes, we rebel, 
we even scout his impudent usurpations. So we have, 
on one hand, men who have lost their liberty ; on the 
other, men w T ho have lost their reverence. One class 
have their souls entombed under church authority. 
The other torn from the past are living as vagrant 
atoms in the open spaces of time, till the hunger of 
inanity and isolation kills them. Piety to the past 
that is a free and filial deference, a rational and duti- 
ful love, is the common want of both. Let the slave 
become a son, the libertine a son, the past a mother 
to both, and the quarrel is ended. 

We might go on with illustrations of this kind, till 
a great multitude of the controverted doctrines of 
Christianity are seen yoked Avith their opposites, in 
friendly embrace, pantheism with theism, absolute 
religion with revealed religion, supralapsarianism with 
sublapsarianism, absolute decrees with self-active free- 
dom, salvation by grace with salvation by works, in- 
ability with ability, natural depravity with natural 



424 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

innocence, the bondage of sin with the freedom of the 
sinner. In all these repugnances, we have only the 
two poles of truth, which if we can manage to com- 
prehend in one and the same mental view, we arrive 
at the proper integrity of the Christian doctrine. In- 
deed we may lay it down as true, in general, that all 
the Christian sects, in all their manifold repugnances 
of doctrine, are only concerned to exhibit the great 
elemental truths of Christianity. They all have 
errors, they all partially mistake, as it is human to 
do, and yet they all have some form of truth to main- 
tain, which, when it is viewed comprehensively, and 
carefully distinguished under the forms of language, 
will fall into the same great scheme of Christian doc- 
trine and assist to fill out the body thereof. So that 
when a man is able to comprehend the reality of all 
sects, casting away the unreality, he will be a full- 
grown proper Christian man. 

Dismissing here subjects of doctrine, we go on to 
speak of polities and organizations. Polities are not 
so much essential truths or doctrines, as means to 
ends. They embody each some practical aim or idea, 
and offer each some valuable contribution to the com- 
prehensive church of the future. Whether they will 
ever coalesce in any practical unity or mutual ac- 
knowledgment of each other, bringing in their treas- 
ures to enrich the common body, many will doubt ; 
but if a hope so beautiful must be renounced as vis- 
ionary, we shall easily convince ourselves, by a study 
of their contents, that they have each some kind of 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 425 

wealth which makes their existence valuable, even 
now, to the world. Or if some of them have no 
Longer a sufficient reason for the maintenance of a 
distinct existence, it is only because they have already 
emptied their treasures into the world's history. Pos- 
sibly such an opinion may sometime be held of them 
all ; for it may be that they are all designed to serve 
only temporary uses. And then, when they have all 
emptied themselves into history, and history contains 
the product of all, what forbids that a new church 
may emerge that shall comprehend the uses of all ? 

And if any such result is ever to appear, where 
sooner than here in these United States ? Why else 
are we thrown together in this manner, — Christians 
of all names and sects, living in the same neighbor- 
hoods, fellow-citizens under the same laws, holding 
equal terms before the laws, united in business, inter- 
married in families ? No such spectacle as this has 
ever been exhibited before, since Christianity entered 
the world ; and yet it seems to be the design of God 
that it shall, ere long, be so in all the other nations 
of mankind. The extension of liberty must bring 
the same results to pass everywhere. It seems to be 
God's purpose that all these multiform sects and poli- 
ties shall either dissolve each other and lodge their 
contents at last in a grand comprehensive unity, or 
else wear themselves into similar shapes by their 
mutual attrition. And how else could a properly 
catholic state, which is the hope of us all, be con- 
structed ? 



426 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

Forecasting such a possibility, let us glance at some 
of the sects and take a survey of their contents. And 
we begin with the Baptists, because they seem, in their 
very distinction as a sect, to stand for that which can 
never be accepted ; for there is not the least proba- 
bility, however confidently they may expect it them- 
selves, that the whole church of God will, at any future 
time, become Baptists. How then, it will be asked, 
can they ever come into any comprehensive state with- 
out renouncing that which alone gives them a dis- 
tinct existence ? But the question implies a view of 
the Baptist sect, whether held by themselves or by 
others, which is superficial and does not do them jus- 
tice. Their real office, as a sect, does not lie in the 
fact that they are Baptists, but in that which makes 
them Baptists. And the fact is of little consequence 
in distinguishing the sect, save as it indicates a deeper 
and more significant cause in their character. Taken 
as a class, the Baptists are the Christian impractica- 
bles (not using the word in an evil sense), individual- 
ists of the highest and most perfect degree. They 
are each a kind of church by himself, holding his 
minutest convictions as stern, immovable fatalities. 
They are the intolerants, so to speak, of individual- 
ism ; sacrificing to it communion and submerging 
under it, to a great degree, the social instinct itself. 
Assuming such a position, they stand off in solemn 
antagonism, against the intolerance of all social con- 
straints, in church and state. Such manifestly are 
the men to be foremost in asserting the sacred rights 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 427 

of the conscience. They did it in England, they did 
it here, they have done it everywhere. And now, at 
this present moment, nothing is wanted in Rome it- 
self, and in all the nations still lying under ecclesias- 
tical oppression, so much as the rising up of a race 
of stern individualists, or impracticables like the Bap- 
tists. In this view they have filled a noble office. 
They represent, in the most naked form, that which 
is the distinction of modern history, — the full recog- 
nition of the individual man and the consequent 
sanctification of his rights and liberties. 

And this we may say is the real truth of the sect, 
the practical idea which measures its value. This 
being accomplished among any given people, there is 
no longer any sufficient reason for its continued exist- 
ence. And when the antagonism which gave it value 
and life is completely routed, we may reasonably 
doubt whether the anti-social or impracticable spirit 
of the sect will not ultimately take away its own vital- 
ity. Indeed we seriously doubt whether a community 
wholly made up of Baptists could be molded into any 
settled and permanent form of social order, whether 
in church or state. They would fly asunder, just as 
now they withdraw from one another, constituting 
already as many as fifteen or twenty distinct sects. 
They are too unreducible, too much given to their in- 
dividuality, to melt into any solid form of social unity. 
Besides, it is sure to be discerned also, as their mental 
breadth increases, that the mere question of baptism 
is one of too small consequence to make any dignified 



428 CHEISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

reason for the existence of a sect. It will be won- 
derful too, if it does not sometime appear unchristian 
to many to forswear the communion of the whole 
Christian world for a pretext so slender. Possibly it 
may also be discerned that the reasonings applied 
to disprove the baptism of children are against the 
spirit of the gospel, against nature, hurtful to the 
family, hurtful to the church, proceeding from an ex- 
aggerated individualism which takes away the Chris- 
tian zest of life as a social ordinance, unsanctifies the 
homes and reduces humanity itself, having Christ in- 
carnate in its bosom, to a collection of dry and repel- 
lent atoms. 

The practical idea embodied in Congregationalism 
or Independency is different, though its history is, in 
some respects, parallel. It is less individual than the 
Baptist sect and more so than the Presbyterian. And, 
in common with all the forms of Puritanism, it is too 
abhorrent of the past, too completely severed in feel- 
ing from the past, owing to the fact that it took its 
being in a contest for the right to reform the errors 
of the past. Considered as a distinct form of polity, 
it stands for equality ; not that equality which belongs 
to separate atoms, but a social equality. It denies all 
priestly dignities, and suffers no lords over the herit- 
age of God. It makes the church a brotherhood, 
equal to the work of self-government, and responsible 
for the maintenance of its own order. Free tolera- 
tion, liberty of conscience, it was sure to accept in 
due time, but it was too much intent at the first on 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 4l2 ( .» 

social ends to invent the doctrine, lis instinct was 

to organize a social slate. — IT MUST BUILD. Hence it 
had no thought but that the elements must coalesce, 
and if they refused there was no place for them. The 
lathers said they would have a free church and a free 
commonwealth, but it was to be free only to them- 
selves. In their doctrine of equality, there was a 
germ of true religious liberty, but it was only a germ 
and time must unfold it. But, going forward under 
the impulse of a strong constructive instinct, the new 
sect laid its foundations, built itself up into a solid 
republican order, and became the type of all that is 
distiuctive in our institutions. Taken as a construc- 
tive power, it is to the Baptists what Massachusetts is 
to Rhode Island, or rather to what Rhode Island was 
in the social confusion of a former age. TVanting 
originally in that which gave its practical value to 
the Baptist sect, it supplied an element which in 
that was deficient. Both are Congregational, but one 
has furnished the antagonistic spirit of liberty, the 
other its constructive social powers. One therefore has 
filled a more occasional office, the other a more per- 
manent. For if Congregationalism dies and the name 
is lost, no frame of polity in church or state can hope 
for a general prevalence which rejects the construc- 
tive powers of American history. 

Presbyterianismis substantially one with it, in this re- 
spect,— a younger brother in our history, who has acted, 
for the most part, in conjunction with the elder, assist- 
ing the same results. Methodism has partially accepted 



•430 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

the same principles of equality and self-government. 
It acknowledges no priesthood. The laity have an 
operative sphere and are sure, at length, to have a 
joint right in the government. Even American Epis- 
copacy has sought to combine with prelacy a lay power 
which represents the constructive basis of our institu- 
tions. The whole American church must some time 
do the same. Indeed there is a philosophic necessity 
that the comprehensive church of the future, if ever it 
shall appear, should conform to the constructive law 
of our institutions. Whether it have one order, or 
three ; whether it be distributed into parishes or dio- 
cesan circles ; it must be a brotherhood, officered by 
itself. The phantom of a priestly succession, distinct 
from the succession of the brotherhood of grace, a 
superstition cherished with so great industry in Eng- 
land, as the last hope of a priestly fabric outlawed 
by time, can never get possession of this nation. The 
constructive law of our history is against it, and it is 
a shadow too thin to battle with a force of so great 
solidity. Our philosophy can never accept it and it is 
too late in the day for a flat superstition to palm itself 
on the earnest belief of a nation like this. Not one in 
fifty of the Episcopal sect in this country earnestly 
believes it now. Many adhere to the sect in spite of 
it, and for reasons of a higher and manlier character. 
We have barely touched upon the Methodist polity, 
but it gives a beautiful illustration, in its history, of a 
very important truth, viz., that any organization 
formed with a godly purpose, and a desire to promote 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 431 

holiness of life and effectiveness in action, will be 
consecrated by Providence and perpetuated as a true 
church. Methodism was not organized as a church, 
but as an abnormal order in the church of England. 
It proposed, not to call out a dissenting body from the 
establishment, but to hold a position auxiliary to it ; 
to stimulate its piety, supply its defects, repair the 
desolations left behind it by its heedless and worldly 
ministry. A more disinterested aim never actuated 
any human society. And such has been its efficiency, 
so manifest the good fruits it has yielded, that it has 
been obliged, as it were, to become a church and be 
perpetuated as such. God gives it the succession it 
did not ask, and holds it up to mock all successions 
that lie in tradition and not in duty. Methodism 
also illustrates another truth, viz., that Arminianism 
can be earnest in the godly life as well as Calvin- 
ism, — a fact that God offers us to enlarge our charity 
and prepare us to a broader spirit of comprehensive- 
ness. Were it not for this, were it known that Armin- 
ianism is synonymous only with deadness and spirit- 
ual inefficiency, many would shrink from the compre- 
hension of any one of its principles as from the contact 
of death. Even now, when an age of dead Calvinism 
appears, it has become a kind of habit with us, the 
injustice of which many do not know, to call the 
profitless churches and ministers Arminians. It 
would seem that a glance at the doctrines held on one 
side by these dead churches, then at our Methodist 
brethren on the other, devout, earnest, filling the new 



432 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

regions and the desolate wastes of the land with their 
fervent prayers and the fervent praises of men con- 
verted to God, would suffice to show us all, first that 
Calvinism may be dead, and second that Arminianism 
may be alive, — possibly that a comprehension of both 
will be safer than to rest in either. Nor is there 
any sect in our country, we are sure, that will more 
readily sink itself in a comprehensive unity of all 
than this, which undertook in England to be auxiliary 
only to another, and which here rejoices in being a 
pioneer to all others. May it not be found also that 
the true comprehensive church will require an order 
of Methodism within itself, that all defects may be 
supplied, and all waste places visited ? 

The most obstinate impediment to a comprehensive 
church is to be found, we fear, in the Episcopal church 
of our country. There seems to be a kind of fatality, 
if we should not rather say fatuity, in our American 
Episcopacy, which forbids it to see where its own in- 
terest lies, and also what is due from it to the com- 
mon cause of God in the nation. It embodies in itself 
treasures of spiritual wealth that were reluctantly 
renounced by our fathers, and which many among us 
now would gladly accept, if the wood, hay, and stub- 
ble were removed. We could draw out a modification 
of its liturgy and also of its polity, which would make 
it inviting to the great body of Christians under other 
names, and not a whit less satisfactory to its most 
earnest lay adherents ; it only would not satisfy the 
egregious claims of its priesthood. They would be 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 483 

required to give up the superstitions they have gath- 
ered round their office, and interwoven with their 
priestly functions. If they could cease to Anglicize 
and consent to be Americans ; if letting go their tradi- 
tional grace, they could suffer a very little of true 
Christian philosophy ; we would give them a divine 
right in their office, quite as efficient and far more 
valid than any which they cling to now. 

Doubtless there is a truth, a great and momentous 
truth, wrapped up in their doctrine of succession ; for 
the church of God is a vital body, and a vital body is 
one ; so completely one, in fact, as well-nigh to ex- 
clude the idea of succession. Its life is the life of 
God. This is its organific power, and it fills all ages, 
not as collective or successive aggregations, but as a 
corporate unity ; sets us in immediate and living con- 
nection with the apostles and all saints of all ages, 
makes them venerable to our thoughts, and us partici- 
pants in their history. So that a church out of con- 
nection with the past is impossible, and a church that 
has lost the sense of its connection, regarding itself 
as being historically new, is a church chilled and 
benumbed by the fictitious isolation it assumes. But 
it does not follow that the vital unity of the church is 
constructed by an official succession of ministers or 
church magistrates, but the contrary ; for then there 
would be a complete vital organism in the magistracy 
of the church, distinct from that of the general body 
of disciples, requiring us to believe that there is either 
no vital unity in that, or else that there are two dis- 



434 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS, 

tinct unities, one of the magistracy and another of the 
body, which is the same as to deny the unity of the 
church. 

At the same time, there is an important truth also 
wrapped up in this idea of a magisterial grace descend- 
ing from one to another. It is only misconceived. 
The truth is this, that every officer in the church, as 
in the state, must be in it by a divine right ; he must be 
clothed in his office by God. But it does not follow 
that he must be clothed in a certain way, viz., by a 
traditional grace of succession. In the days when 
kings and nobles succeeded by blood, and legitimacy 
was the same thing as a divine right to reign, it was 
natural that bishops, who do not succeed by blood, 
should think it essential to their office that it be de- 
rived by some kind of succession. Hence the fig- 
ment of a bishop's grace was invented, and was read- 
ily accepted by the church ; for how else could a 
bishop have any right, unless by some kind of tradi- 
tion or inheritance ? And how shall the Anglican 
church fortify itself now against the inroads of change, 
except as it consecrates this figment ? Might not our 
American Episcopacy let go this fiction of legitimacy, 
and, ceasing to nurse a superstition so feeble and void 
of dignity, trust itself to such divine right as it may 
have directly from God as the head of all society ? 
For it is God who clothes all office with a sacred right, 
an American president as truly as a British queen. 
The designation may be by blood or by election ; the 
investiture may be in one form or another ; still the 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 435 

magistrate is in by a divine right under God as the 
fountain of all magistracy. 

We are the more willing to apologize for our Ameri- 
can Episcopacy, as adhering until now to this Angli- 
cizing habit, because of the practically atheistic no- 
tions of government which have hitherto prevailed 
among our people. But when we have had time to 
bring out the true theory of our government, — elec- 
tion designating the ruler, God accepting and clothing 
him in his office, — authority derived not from men, 
but from God, the only conceivable fountain of 
authority ; when our political philosophy has brought 
us to this, (for as yet Ave have no political philosophy 
that relates to anything deeper than the forms of gov- 
ernment,) then it will be more inexcusable to cling to 
the superstition of a canonical succession in the 
church. And why should not our American Episco- 
pacy, embracing now a manlier doctrine, and niarry- 
ing itself boldly to our American institutions, assist 
us in consecrating the divine right of our civil mag- 
istracies, instead of saying practically that God can 
sanctify a magistracy only through a line of legiti- 
macy and a traditional investiture ? 

We can never have a comprehensive church, in this 
nation, that mocks the political order of the nation. 
Let our Episcopal friends consider this, and give to 
the considerations we have offered their true weight ; 
and then they will be ready to offer their church to 
the nation, not as a foreign mannerism, not as an 
affront to our feelings and our history, but as Christ 



4:36 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

offers love to the race, paying tribute even to Caesar. 
We care not for three orders or thirty, if only they 
bring us no superstitions and no lords over God's her- 
itage. American Episcopacy is really nearer to Ameri- 
can Congregationalism now than it is to the state 
establishment of England, if only it could acknowl- 
edge what a rigid analysis of structure would certainly 
show. Let it thank American history that it is brought 
so much nearer to the true apostolic model. And 
if Puritanism has been a root in our history, let some 
honor be ascribed to Puritanism. Being sure also of 
this, that no church can unite itself to the love and 
life of a nation, which does not honor its fathers. 
Actuated by views like these, let our American Epis- 
copacy pour itself into our bosom, as it may, with all 
its venerable treasures ; neither suffer a doubt that 
all it has, which is worth accepting, will be accepted. 
We come now, last of all, to the Romish church, 
which, at present, is not in any sense an American 
church, but a Romish. It is foreign not in its sym- 
pathies only, but in its organization ; its head and 
ruling power is at Rome. What are to be its fortunes 
in this country it may be difficult to foretell. It is 
perfectly manifest, however, that our institutions must 
communicate their spirit to its disciples in such a de- 
gree, as to limit effectually the powers of its priest- 
hood, and in process of time to require radical changes 
in its discipline. It can live among us only as it sub- 
mits to be Americanized. At present it has little 
moral power in our country, and we see not how it 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 437 

can well have more, until it suffers a closer conformity 
with our institutions. Were it left to stand alone, as 
a foreign religion, it would soon have less. But un- 
happily another church, maintaining its pretensions by 
arguments of a similar character, and associated with 
the name of England, mitigates the alien aspect it 
would have when standing alone, and imparts to it a 
show of character it has not in itself. 

We regard the Romish church as a kind of monu- 
mental Christianity. Its rites, its creeds, its prayers, 
are all monuments ; the shrines under which it has 
gathered the bones of the dead ages of the faith are 
monuments ; its cathedrals are representations in 
stone of their builders, and the grandeur of their 
Christian ideas. The saints' days are a practice in 
the mnemonics of history. The mendicant orders, 
monasteries, and religious houses still continued, after 
the spirit of life in which they rose has departed, are 
a pantomime all of death and the dead. So of the 
pictures, images, altars, amulets, relics, and priestly 
robes, — everything seen, handled, and used in the 
machinery of the worship, is monumental. The in- 
cense has a Jewish smell, the vestals are a classic, the 
candles shed a pagan light. The whole immense 
framework of the religion is monumental. It repre- 
sents, not the contents of the Gospel of Christ, but 
the history of that Gospel ; showing how it has acted 
on the base elements of an idolatrous world and a 
corrupt human nature, and how they, in turn, have 
acted upon it. The good and the evil, the holy and 



4:38 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

the base, the charities of saints and the extortions of 
sin, the pure breathings of the just and the cruelties 
of power, trophies of faith and scars of wrong, gen- 
tile prejudices, pagan philosophies, gods baptized, — 
everything that has been since the Lord's ascension, 
all that men have done out of an evil or a good heart 
to build up his religion, is represented and embodied. 
The power of Christ is visible ; in one view the struc- 
ture is a memorial of his truth. Quite as visible is 
the power of evil. It is such a fabric as man builds, 
when he blends himself and the social delusions of 
his race with the heavenly truth he will consecrate. 

And yet, if we regard it as the design of God to 
connect the Christian future with the Christian past 
by means of Romanism, how manifest is it that Ro- 
manism is what it should be! It garners up the life 
of the dead ages, as it gathers the bodies of the 
saints under its shrines, and bears them in palpable 
show through dark ages of sense and oblivion, to 
connect with the living thoughts of a more remote 
and more intelligent future. For, though we may 
shrink from any thought of union with its baser con- 
tents, we shall embrace with the livelier and healthier 
reverence on that account all it contains of sanctity 
and truth. We shall see Christ struggling through 
it, as the sun through clouds. The righteous good of 
the past will appear in it, as in a dark and solemn 
tragedy, to be embraced with tears. Great truths 
prevailing still against long ages of superstition and 
perverse speculation, as if unable to die, will shine 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 439 

forth in it the more gloriously that they have proved 
their divinity. Things thai move us by their sanctity 
and grandeur will move us the more deeply, that things 
base and offensive, always at hand, throw us into a 
maze and mix our reverence with disgust. Protesting 
against the human, we shall be the more impressed 
by what is divine. 

But this, we regret to say, is not yet the happiness 
of Protestantism. The throe of the Protest has been so 
severe, and the consequent antagonism so intense, 
that a kind of horror, which absorbs all discrimina- 
tive thoughts, separates us from Romanism and it from 
us. As Protestants, we seem to imagine a new begin- 
ning of Christianity. We assert a future seemingly 
disrupted from the past, and Romanism confronts us 
with a past disrupted from the future. And this is a 
condition of death to both ; for every social body, 
whether civil or Christian, is of the past and for the 
future, and can not properly live save as it connects 
with both. 

What now we need is this ; being delivered of the 
mutual horror, which has thrown both great divis- 
ions of the church asunder and been a wall of unrea- 
son between them, we must dare to look, one at the 
other, with eyes of deliberative inspection. And thus 
we shall be drawn gradually towards comprehension ; 
one to unite with the Christian past, the other with 
the Christian future ; the old to be purified by the 
new, the new to be hallowed and made venerable by 
the old. Is not such a process already begun ? What 



440 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

signifies the new sympathy, which now exists, between 
the Romish state and the British government ; a sym- 
pathy strong enough even to countervail the influence 
of Austria ? And what is the import of the cheers 
for Pius Xinth, that are rolling back upon Italy from 
this democratic and Protestant people ? And what is 
to be the necessary result of the spread of intelligence 
and of popular freedom, the growth of commerce, the 
rapid intercommunications of travel, and the universal 
intermingling of sects, which are sure to arise, on the 
future prevalence of liberty ? The laws of society 
seem to prophesy here, and what do they tell us ? 
Let no one imagine the impossibility of any such thing 
as a gradual approach or even a final coalescence of 
the two forms of religion. If a Grotius and a Leibnitz 
maintained, in their clay, the possibility of a reconcili- 
ation and a final comprehension, laboring earnestly to 
accomplish it, we may well enough risk any sentence 
that may be passed upon us for cherishing the same 
thought now. 

Unhappily we are accustomed only to speak of the 
differences between us and the Romanists, not of our 
agreements. Probably most Protestants would be 
surprised by the results that might appear on a rigid 
comparison of our doctrines, so many are the coinci- 
dences on points generally considered to be of the 
first consequence. And where some repugnances 
exist, a still more comprehensive scrutiny would often 
show that one is but the complement of the other. 
Elements also in the Romish polity, which Ave regard 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 441 

with unqualified repugnance or even abhorrence, will 
sometimes be found, when viewed historically, to have 
served uses so important as to allow a mitigation of 
our judgments. We just now spoke, for example, of 
the monastic institutions in terms that arc well enough 
adapted to their present merits. But in their origin, 
they were scarcely more than a natural development 
or outward expression of the unworldly spirit of the 
Christian life. And of this they stood as a living 
symbol before mankind, setting forth, in visible show, 
the antagonism between this world and the self -cruci- 
fying spirit of a life of faith. And as every sort of 
truth has been maintained by some extreme view of 
it, we need not scruple to allow that the unworldly 
nature of the godly life was more distinctly impressed 
on the minds of men, and is also more seriously ap- 
prehended even by us, by means of the ascetic or 
monastic institutions. For we can not definitely tell 
what causes in the past have assisted to construct our 
own views and sentiments, or detect the secret chem- 
istry of history by which they have been shaped. In 
short, we may well doubt whether, if Christ had left 
the world, and these institutions had not arisen, the 
deep and awful chasm between the life of this world 
and the life of faith would ever have been practically 
set open to human apprehension, as it now is. If 
then, we do not prefer, just now, to commence building 
monasteries, or praising the sanctity of the living 
monks, it should comfort us, if we can find any inlet 
for respect in the history of their origin. 



442 CHKISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

The ecclesiastical supremacy of the Pope, and the 
stern political unity of the church under him, are quite 
as little respected by us as they can be, but even these 
may yet be viewed in a similar light. The Romish 
church glories in the word catholic, understanding 
however, by that term, nothing different from a uni- 
versal polity. It is not a world-religion, but an iron 
ecclesiasticism for the world, the only possible church, 
thus and therefore the catholic church. Under this 
formal error, it represents and holds before mankind 
a great and holy truth. It symbolizes unity and uni- 
versality. And was it' not necessaiy, when the free 
mind of the Protestant world fell off into contesting 
bodies and scouting parties, flying hither and thither 
in quest of truth, that some consolidated body should 
remain, to hold itself up as a symbol of the catholic 
unity, and recall the mind of the discursives to that 
which is the only proper aim and last end of their in- 
quiries, a true catholic unity ; that which is never to 
be forgotten, always to be longed for, and as soon as 
may be, to be realized ? For while Romanism stands 
for unity, and holds up its symbol, it has not yet con- 
ceived the idea of a true catholic church. No church 
is catholic, simply because it includes the human race ; 
it must include them in the truth ; it must compre- 
hend them only as it is itself comprehensive. Hence 
there is implied, as a necessary condition, so much of 
disintegration, as will start a discursive process and 
bring out all the antagonisms involved in a complete 
and many-sided view of the truth. For this many- 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS 443 

sided view is not the view of any single man or body 
of men. God has it, for the absolute truth is in him. 
We have it not, save by manifold experiment. Rome 
assumes that it has even absolute truth, without 
experiment, and in that right challenges the assent of 
all mankind. But this is only to claim a universal 
application for that which is itself partial, which is 
not catholicity. True catholicity offers a universal 
doctrine, and for that seeks a universal application. 
The first problem is to find the universal doctrine, a 
problem which Protestantism is faithfully engaged to 
solve. For it is remarkable that, while the Romish 
church holds out the formal type or symbol of catholi- 
city in its discipline, Protestantism only supplies the 
agencies by which catholicity may be realized. By 
this only, in its free and discursive working, are 
brought to light and set up for distinct apprehension, 
all the elements to be combined in the settlement of a 
universal or complete body of truth. Romanism holds 
the mold of unity, and we are trying to fill it. And 
when the comprehensive process is completed by 
which the material we offer is brought into a common 
result, a true catholic church will appear, — a church 
including the free mind of the world, because it rep- 
resents the free mind of the world. All the views of 
all ages and schools being combined in a comprehen- 
sive result, that result will be the nearest approxima- 
tion to the absolute truth of God, and thus a fit 
ground of catholicity. 

That the whole Christian world, however, will ever 



444 CHKISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

fall under any form of strict ecclesiasticism, is hardly 
to be expected. A machinery so cumbrous could 
hardly be supported, and it would offer incentives to 
human ambition more insupportable than the machin- 
ery itself. The Romanist will, just now, think other- 
wise. Arnold and the Chevalier Bunsen will prophesy 
a " church of the future " whose organic polity is 
national. We republicans may imagine the same, 
only that the civil power will not intermeddle, save 
as it offers a friendly protection to the church, repaid 
by its sanctifying presence and the union it conse- 
crates between the public life of the nation and God. 
Enough that the church, in all lands and under what- 
ever diversities, will know itself as one, in common 
works, a common faith, and an accordant worship, — 
the body of Christ on earth, the fullness of him that 
nlleth all in all. And having come to this, it will be 
strange if it should not sometimes gather its ecumeni- 
cal assemblies, not as convocations of state and church 
dignitaries like those of old time, deputed to legislate 
over the faith ; but assemblies of the friends and min- 
isters of God, convoked to speak of things pertaining 
to the kingdom, and worship together before the King. 
And if those magnificent piles, erected to God by the 
men of past ages, should some time hang their arches, 
like skies of stone, over the assembled messengers of 
the world's churches, and shake with the sound of 
their ecumenical hymn, it will then be judged that 
the ancient builders piled these holy structures for a 
purpose worthy of their grandeur. Assembled thus 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 445 

in the grand cathedral of the North, it will nol be for- 
gotten thai Protestantism and Romanism assisted 
both together in piling up so vast a fabric, and then 
the meaning of what was once a conjunction so 
strange will be solved. The "Three Kings" then 
will sleep as consecrated figments in their shrine, 
blank nothings, lost to thought, before the King of 
glory. Or assembled where a Borromeo sleeps en- 
cased in gold and gems, a real and true saint of the 
past, the past will be there, as a living power, repelled 
by no disdain, welcome to all hearts, and breathing 
into all a spirit of conscious unity with the buried 
just of all ages and climes. We are willing too that 
St. Peter's should witness a convocation like this ; for 
then the true idea of the Catholic church will have 
arrived at Rome. And if it may, for one such occa- 
sion, be accepted as the metropolis of the Christian 
world, edicts and bulls will no more be its delight ; 
the tiara will pass to the head of the King, where it 
belongs ; offerings holier than all incense will fill the 
place, and the grand miserere of the nations, poured 
out as a wail for sin, will melt them into a fellowship 
so lowly that human dignities will be forgotten. And 
then we cannot object if the Latin prayers, which em- 
body the worship of past ages, should find their legiti- 
mate use as a common language of devotion, for the 
assembled tongues of mankind. 

In offering these thoughts to the public, we are well 
aware that some may be scandalized or alarmed by 
their free spirit. But such will relieve their appre- 



446 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

hensions, if they consider that we ask no compromise 
of opinions and do not even speak of liberality as a 
special Christian virtue. We simply require it of all 
Christians to look for the truth, and the truth only. 
And if we require them to look beyond themselves 
and across their own boundaries, we see not that there 
is any thing specially frightful in this, if they look for 
nothing but the truth. Or if we prepare a previous 
conviction in their minds, that there is somewhat of 
truth in all Christian bodies, does any one doubt that 
there is ? And if it should happen that all these bodies 
look upon the truth on a side peculiar to themselves, 
what harm can it do us to pass round and look through 
their eyes ? The method taken by the late Evangeli- 
cal Alliance at London, was truly a dangerous method 
and closely allied to licentiousness ; for it chose out 
only common truths in which all the parties could 
agree, and consented to let all other truths pass into 
shade as of minor consequence. We recognize, con- 
trary to this, the great principle that truth is a whole 
and is to be sought only as a whole, anywhere, every- 
where, and by all means. Let no one fear the de- 
bauching of his Christian integrity in so doing. 

Others probably will look upon our labor in this 
matter as a useless expenditure of breath, and the 
hope we encourage as altogether visionary and ro- 
mantic. It would be, if we held the expectation that 
the church of God is ever to become a political unity. 
Or if we proposed to the Christian sects to come to- 
gether and work out a comprehensive unity by any 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 447 

deliberative effort, in the manner of compromise and 

composition. Or if we looked for the realization of 
any such result as we speak of, by any given method, 
within ai y given space of time. Our object is simply 
to mi before the Christian sects the comfortable truth 
that our antagonisms are, to a great degree, compre- 
hensible, — parts only or partialities, having each their 
complement in all the others. Thus we seek to beget 
a more fraternal feeling and soften the asperities and 
prejudices that hold us asunder ; thus to set all think- 
ing minds on an endeavor after the broadest and most 
catholic views of truth, in the confident hope that God 
will thus enlarge their souls, draw them together 
towards a more complete brotherhood, and finally into 
a full consent of worship. This, if we rightly under- 
stand, is what the Scriptures mean by " seeing eye to 
eye. " We now see shoulder to shoulder ; but when 
we can look into the eye, every man of his brother, 
and see what he sees, we shall be one. 

And if any one asks, when shall these things be ? 
we may well enough refer him to the geologists for 
an answer. For if God required long ages of heav- 
ing and fiery commotion to settle the world's layers 
into peace and habitable order, we ought not utterly 
to despair, if the geologic era of the church covers a 
somewhat longer space of time than we ourselves 
might prescribe. Enough for us that we show the 
laws of commotion and the methods of final pacifica- 
tion. Enough for us that the views we have advanced, 
if accepted and held by our fellow-Christians, will be 



•±48 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

found to contain the philosophic causes of a better 
day. drawing us all into a closer assimilation and, as 
sure as causes must have their effects, into a final em- 
brace in the truth. Confident of this, and leaving 
times and seasons to God. we do not seem to propose 
to the world unpractical schemes or romantic expec- 
tations. 

This discussion we have already protracted beyond 
our ordinary limits, but the magnitude of the subject 
must be our excuse. There is yet a whole branch of 
it remaining untouched, and one that woidd require a 
volume to give it a sufficient representation. It is 
this. — to exhibit the laws and conditions under which 
the comprehensive process we speak of may be con- 
ducted to its results with the greatest certainty and 
expedition. All we can do here at present is to offer 
a few suggestions. 

And first of all, there needs to be a more compre- 
hensive character formed in individual Christians. 
We must have a piety not of " our church," or " our 
catechism,"' or " our baptism," or our - Christian 
democracy." but a piety measured by God himself. 
We must look upon the comprehensive character as a 
Christian attainment. Such was the character of 
Christ, and therefore we must lie as sure that he will 
have it formed in us. as that he will bring us into his 
own image. God himself too, is a comprehensive be- 
ing in his character, so that coming unto him in the 
closest and most intimate union of spirit, which is the 
very idea of Christian piety, we must endeavor to par- 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 449 

take of thai quality which most distinguishes him. 

For it is not sonic holler philosophy generated in our 
understanding that can work out, by itself, the process 
of which we speak. We must have a better philoso- 
phy in our heart and spirit, and this we must draw 
from God. We shall attain to no true comprehen- 
siveness, except as we find it in God; in the holier 
love which melts away our prejudices, subordinates 
our human passions, expands the narrowness of our 
fallen nature, and makes us partake of the divine na- 
ture. This will universalize, first our heart and, 
through that, gradually, our understanding. ( We 
shall have a single eye when we have a simple, godly 
heart. A really comprehensive spirit, one all devoted 
to truth, stretching itself to contain all truth, as seen 
by all Christian minds, must be a religious spirit. 
Clearing itself of all human trammels, it must go up 
unto God himself ; for nowhere short of God do the 
lines of truth meet and come into harmony so that a 
mind may comprehend them. In him too, as we cer- 
tainly know, all our sects and divisions melt into 
unity. He is not the God of our sect. We dare not 
say it or think it. We tacitly admit that he holds 
some broader view, which is also and for that reason, 
juster than ours. We do not doubt that he looks upon 
us all as diminished atoms of intelligence ranging in 
his infinite realm of truth, fixing here and there upon 
our points of doctrine, and regarding each the field 
that lies within his narrow horizon as the whole 
field, — repugnant therefore, as between ourselves, but 



450 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

still in radical harmony, as before him. To such 
thoughts we are to accustom ourselves, to consecrate 
them in our prayers and nourish them before him by 
a more conscious and habitual exercise. And if our 
piety does not enlarge us in this manner, we are rather 
to repent of it than to bless ourselves in it. But if 
God be in us, enlarging us by his own measure and 
causing us to receive of his own greatness, then shall 
we cease to be straitened in ourselves, and be able to 
comprehend that length and breadth and depth and 
height, which it is the prerogative of his saints to do. 
It will help us also to remember that, as men or 
human creatures, our tendency is to err by narrow- 
ness and partiality, never by completeness or compre- 
hensiveness. We are not only finite, but we enter 
into life only as rudimental beings, here to be 
filled out into proper men. We are to study, 
reflect, observe, rectify eriors, then to rectify rectifi- 
cations, and thus to fill out the character of sons of 
God. Children, we observe, always go for extremes. 
They apprehend what they may, but in our sense of 
the word, comprehend nothing ; and a very preponder- 
ant number of our race seem never to get beyond 
their childhood in this respect. Our very finiteness, 
struggling after rest in the infinite, is obliged to seize 
on single points ; and these glimmering points we 
take for suns, partly because they are our seeing and 
partly because they fill our vision. We are thus 
occupied, for the most part, with half-seeing. And 
having found some pole of truth or of duty, we go to 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 451 

war lor that, as if our half truth were entitled to fill 
and occupy the universe. Then again our passions 
carry us away yet farther, like a very great sail upon 
sonic feathery skiff which the gusts drive hither and 
thither, and force upon the shallows when they will. 
The pride which says, " this is my truth," or " our 
truth," opinions held more firmly by the will because 
they are so dimly seen by the understanding, the lust 
of power, the fanatical idolatry of sect, all the venom- 
ous spirits that hover in the steam of our carnal 
hearts, conspire to narrow even our piety itself. Evil 
is a perpetual astringent in our souls, and we can get 
no breadth, save as we mortify and crucify ourselves. 
These are truths which every Christian man must re- 
gard more attentively than has yet been done in any 
former age. They must enter into our practical life. 
We must habitually suspect ourselves of limitation. 
We must find the sect spirit in our nature keeping 
close company with our sins and coiling itself also, as 
a serpent, around the body of our piety. And when 
this latter grows exclusive and repugnant, walling 
itself up to heaven in its righteousness, we must have 
it for a maxim that we are narrowing ourselves by the 
measure of our sins. 

Furthermore, it will be of great use, if we have 
some philosophic view of life and its appointments, 
that accords with God's design therein. He has put 
us down in this many-sided world, where all manner 
of contrary and controversial forces are pushing us 
hither and thither, that he may bring us into all possi- 



•452 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

ble views of truth and duty, cure our half-seeing, fill 
out our otherwise partial measure, and make us as 
nearly complete as it is possible for us to be. All 
that we see, hear, experience, in this multifarious 
world of struggle and debate, is undoubtedly meant to 
enlarge the comprehension of our mind, principles, 
feelings, hopes, charities. Neither let any one shrink 
from such a thought, as if it were akin to laxity or 
licentiousness. There is a kind of liberalism, as we 
have said, which is but another name for indifference 
to the truth. With such a spirit the comprehensive 
soul has no feeling of sympathy. This is, in fact, the 
type of character most of all devoted to truth, regard- 
ing it as the brightest beam of divinity that shines 
into our world. Therefore it reverently seeks the 
truth in all minds irradiated by its light, separates it 
from the errors with which it is blended, sanctifies it 
as holy and dear to God. On the other hand, if we 
speak of the partisan classes or schools, sometimes 
called illiberal, such as gather about some pole of 
doctrine, stiff for their particular sect, impatient of 
the least departure from it, how manifest is it that 
these would rather die for half the truth than for the 
whole ! But the comprehensive spirit seeks to com- 
prehend all repugnances, and lose, if possible, no 
shred of truth, wherever it may be found. Actuated 
by this lofty spirit, in which it resembles itself to God, 
it listens to all voices, searches out all forms of doc- 
trine, proves all things and holds fast that which is 
good. Let no one fancy that he finds in history 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 453 

examples to deter us from the indulgence of such a 
spirit, as if it were the omen of a licentious age; for 
the history of man has never yet offered an example 
of the kind. There have been many attempts, in the 
Christian world, to bring about what is called, in the 
history, a comprehension of sects and parties. And 
the best men of the church have been forward in them. 
Baxter, Howe, Dr. Watts, Bishop King, Tillotson, 
Patrick, and others of the highest distinction in our 
English race, have conceived the idea of a composi- 
tion of sects, and labored in their time to bring it to 
pass, — labored of course in vain ; for they conceived 
no other method of comprehension, than one that is 
to be realized immediately by an act of consent. 
Their effort was to settle the church by concession, 
compromise, and a moderation of extremes, not to 
prepare the souls of all disciples by a gradual process 
of enlargement in the truth. Our Episcopal friends, 
too, sometimes delight to call their church, " The Com- 
prehensive Church," gravely showing how many vari- 
eties of faith may be quietly harbored, and have been, 
under its convenient ambiguities ! We propose a 
method somewhat different from all these, and one, 
we think, which is as much more practicable as it is 
less dangerous and farther removed from licentious- 
ness. 

At the same time, while we speak of it as a less 
dangerous method, we cannot deny that it requires a 
much higher courage and firmness of spirit; for it 
lays upon every man, as an individual, to begin with 



454 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

himself, and trust his opinions to a law or process 
which is higher than the law of any sect or school. 
And it is scarcely possible that one, who is accustomed 
to handle all the great subjects of religious inquiry in 
this method, and to work his mind by the process it 
prescribes, should not become a generally suspicious 
character. But he must content himself with the 
verdict of the future, not doubting that a spirit so in- 
genuous will some time be as much approved by his 
fellow Christians, as it certainly is by God himself. 
Meantime, while resting himself in this manner on 
the truth of his own intentions, he will probably find 
also that he is delivered of an affliction which is the 
necessary torment of all mere partisans, dwelling in 
an element of composure which more than repays the 
distrusts of his sect. The sectarian or partisan is the 
man of a part, one who measures himself by the con- 
tents of his sect, and not in reality by the truth itself. 
And as every partial view must have its antagonist, 
he is doomed to undergo a perpetual anxiety for his 
position. For, regarding it as the very truth itself, 
the complete truth of God, when he sees it assaulted 
by some adversary, as it certainly will be, he is filled 
with distressful anxiety lest the very foundations of 
the Gospel should finally give way or be corrupted. 
But the comprehensive method assists one to look on 
the two adverse parties as half-seeing men, who, if 
they see the whole truth between them, have yet the 
disadvantage that they see nothing as a whole. It is 
as if one saw the centrifugal and the other the attrac 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 455 

live force of astronomy. One fears that the worlds 
will fly asunder beyond all fellowship, the other shud- 
ders Lesl they rush into a grand lump of ruins in the 
center. Bui the man who can comprehend both forces 
in a scientific view, rests in eomfort on the balanced 
order of the worlds, knowing that nothing can ever 
disturb the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or burst 
the hands of Orion. In the same way it will ever be 
found that the men of a part or a sect are an uncom- 
fortable and anxious race, living in perpetual panic, 
;is if God's realm of truth were just about to dissolve, 
because their truth is threatened by another which, 
for some reason, will have advocates as earnest as 
they. But there is calmness, comfort, courage, and 
rest for any eomprehensive soul, knowing that if all 
together succeed, they will only suffice to fill out the 
measures of divine truth. 

We have spoken already of language, as the fruit- 
ful source of contrary opinions and sects. If our 
schools of theology could, by three years of exercise, 
get into the minds of their pupils a right understand- 
ing of this one single matter, — the relation of a 
thought to a word, — they would do more to quicken 
their intelligence and prepare them to a skillful reso- 
lution of the great questions pertaining to religion, 
than is often done by their whole course of discipline. 
This of itself would be the fruitful seed of a great 
and powerful theology. This only can open a true 
interpretation of Scripture, such as will suffice for a 
settlement of Christian doctrine. The Scriptures are 



456 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 

the truth of God under the forms of language, and 
subject to its laws. Xo other book contains a system 
of truth so complete and comprehensive as the Bible, 
and for that very reason it combines all repugnant 
modes of statement. Viewed in its forms of lan- 
guage, without descending into its interior meaning, 
it is the most contradictory of all books. It is the 
product of all ages, and represents all kinds of mental 
habit. It views every subject of truth and duty on 
every side, and sets it forth at every pole. It offers 
thus, to a perverse or insufficient interpretation, ma- 
terial for every sect. Logically treated and without 
any power of insight deeper than logic, sects are its 
legitimate products. We hear it said on every side, 
that there are no " isms " in the Bible. Rather should 
we say, which is the real truth, that all manner of 
" isms " are in it, comprehended there ; finite in in- 
finite, as we ourselves in God. Therefore only is it a 
complete and universal code of truth worthy of its 
author. When the Christian scholars are able to dis- 
tinguish between the forms of truth and truth itself, 
receiving the latter without being enslaved by the 
laws of logic enveloped in the former, the true catho- 
lic doctrine will be seen and the sects will disappear 
and die. Sooner they cannot. 

It is of the highest consequence also that we should 
understand the true import of the Christian history, 
and discover what duty it has prepared for us. We 
mourn over the controversies and contentions which 
up to this time have rent, as we say, the unity and 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 457 

peace of the church of God. Many minds have lately 
been occupied with a peculiar grief on this account. 
See, they say, into how many sects and schools the 
body of our Lord is riven ! And if we look at the 
evil passions and bitter strifes involved, it is truly a 
mournful sight. But controversies must needs arise ; 
in one view, controversies were needed, else the mani- 
fold extremes of truth could never appear. It was 
necessary for the great champions to gird on their 
armor and take the field. It was necessary to see 
behind us a long line of militant ages, smoking in the 
dust of controversy and causing the air to ring with 
the blows of their valiant encounter. So of the sects 
that have multiplied upon us in these last ages. All 
these are but the preliminary work necessary to be 
done in the trying out of God's truth. In one view, 
there have never been too many controversies, and 
are not now too many sects ; for taken together they 
are wanted, all, as a grand exhibit or practical dis- 
play of the manifold extremes of truth. The first 
ages could not take up the comprehending of oppo- 
sites until the opposites were set forth ; but they did 
what they could, they set them forth. And now, in 
these last times, the result is to appear. 

What then is now to be done ? What does God 
require of us ? Controversy ? No, it is generally 
agreed that we have worn out controversy. What 
then ? Must we learn to hold opinions more loosely, 
to be patient with error, and content ourselves in it ? 
No, persecution itself were a dignified compliment to 



458 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS, 

God's truth in comparison with any such inanity as 
that. Do we then want a grand, world-wide Alliance, 
in which all Christians will agree to agree, or if they 
cannot do that, to controvert harmoniously ? So many 
have thought, and they appear to fancy that when the 
Christian sects are strung together thus, like bells 
without a tongue, they will ring the world a concert 
by their external impact. Doubtless it is well, if they 
only meet to pray together and blend their hearts in 
communion before God. It is in itself a beautiful 
sight, and quite as beautiful in what it indicates, — 
the fact that now, at last, a comprehensive brother- 
hood in Christ has become a want. That want is 
above all things to be nourished. And being nour- 
ished, how shall it be guided to the attainment of its 
object ? Not by selecting from the contents of our 
sects, and building up a union in diminished quanti- 
ties of conviction. Every bell must have a tongue 
and a voice of its own. What we need is enlarged 
quantities of conviction, fullness of truth, not a com- 
pact based on half the quantity possessed by us now. 
We must take up the conviction that we do not all 
together contain more than the truth, and the en- 
deavor must be to end our strifes by such a kind of 
enlargement as will comprehend all our antagonisms, 
and bring us into the essential unity of truth itself. 
We must have it as a settled conviction, that in almost 
every form of Christian opinion earnestly maintained, 
even those which are often regarded as pure error, 
there is yet some element of truth, something which 



CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 459 

makes it true to its diseiples. Then laying aside all 
malice, our schools must go into the language, one of 
another, asking what makes it true to the school 
maintaining it, and thus we must proceed till all our 
antagonisms are sifted and every school has gotten to 
itself the riches of all. Or better still, admitting each 
that our wisdom is not perfect, that the truth we 
hold is only partial truth, we are to cherish the 
want of something more perfect. And then, ceasing 
to insist that others shall receive and justify us, 
we are to ask, What have they which is a want in 
us ? What views of theirs, qualifying ours, would 
render them more valuable to us ? What contri- 
bution, accepted of them, would make us more com- 
plete in the riches of the Gospel ? Thus let Calvinism 
take in Arminianism, Arminianism Calvinism ; let 
decrees take in contingency, contingency decrees ; 
faith take in works, and works faith ; the old take in 
the new, the new the old ; not doubting that we shall 
be as much wiser as we are more comprehensive, as 
much closer to unity as we have more of the truth. 
For then, as all are seen embracing and comprehending 
all, we shall find that we are one, not by virtue of any 
concert or agreement, but as the necessary consequence 
of our completeness in the truth. To be strung to- 
gether in outward alliances will now be a vain thing ; 
for all Christian souls will ring in peals of harmony, 
as a chime that is voiced by the truth. 



MAR 10 19'J9 












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